Ethiopian Israelis: housing, employment, education.

There are approximately 85,000 Jews of Ethiopian extraction in

Israel, including 23,000 who are Israeliborn.
Most immigration from
Ethiopia came in two waves-8,000 in Operation Moses (1984) and 14,000 in
Operation Solomon.
This report, written ten years after Operation Solomon, examines
social policy in regard to Ethiopian immigrants in three main
areas--housing, employment, and education--and asks how these Jews are
faring in Israel.
Housing
Most Ethiopian Israelis reside in close proximity to one another in
disadvantaged neighborhoods within a small number of cities and towns.
This is contrary to the declared intentions of the official
absorption policy. First, that policy aimed to prevent the development
of Ethiopian "ghettos." Second, the policy aimed to steer
Ethiopian immigrants toward middle-class neighborhoods. Third, the
official policy encouraged these immigrants to purchase homes in the
center of the country, where employment and social services abound, and
not in peripheral areas.
The first two policy aims have not been achieved; the third has
been achieved to some extent.
Housing Situation
Data from the Ministry of Construction and Housing, released in
2001, show that most Ethiopian immigrants live in permanent housing that

they own. Between 1988 and April 2001, 10,542 Ethiopian immigrant
households purchased apartments with the help of a government mortgage
(Ministry of Construction and Housing, memorandum, July 2001).
Most other households of Ethiopian origin live in rented public
housing. In June 2001, according to the Amigur and Amidar public housing
companies, 23,300 persons of Ethiopian extraction (29 percent of the
Ethiopian community) lived in public housing (Amidar memorandum, July
11, 2001, and Amigur memorandum, July 5, 2001); 2,000 dwelled in mobile
homes (Amidar, memorandum, July 5, 2001), and about 3,000 lived in
immigrant absorption centers (Brookdale Institute, 2001:15).
Most immigrants who still live in absorption centers and mobile
homes arrived recently. (In 1999 and 2000, there were about 2,000
immigrants from Ethiopia each year [Ministry of Immigrant Absorption,
www.moia.gov.il] and in 2001 there were approximately 3,300 [Ministry of
Immigrant Absorption, 2002].) Some young singles who came in previous
years are also still living in mobile homes.
Ethiopian Immigrants Mediated vs. Direct Absorption
Immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who arrived en masse in
the 1990s, were integrated in a process termed "direct
absorption," i.e., the authorities did not get involved in
decisions such as choice of place of residence, employment, and
lifestyle.
The direct absorption policy was not applied in the case of
Ethiopian immigrants. When the first large group of Ethiopian immigrants
reached the country, in Operation Moses, it was decided that the Jewish
Agency would be responsible for their absorption and that the process

would last five years. In the first stage, the immigrants would be given
temporary housing in immigrant absorption centers, hotels converted into
absorption centers, and public housing. In the second stage, a year
later, they would be settled in permanent housing. During their stay in
temporary housing, the immigrants would undergo medical examinations and
receive medical care. After three months, they were to begin learning
Hebrew and familiarizing themselves with life in Israel by means of
intermediaries such as paraprofessionals from the community, social
workers, and other caregivers. The first government plan described the
anticipated process thus: "During the first period, they will
undergo medical examinations and treatment and afte rwards devote their
time to learning how to function at a basic level at home and in the
[new] environment, and to learning Hebrew" (Ministry of Immigrant
Absorption 4:1985). Absorption centers were also supposed to serve as
"transit stations" until family members still in Ethiopia
could be flown to Israel and families could be reunited before their
transfer to permanent housing.
The plan was that in Stage Two, a year later, the immigrants would
move into permanent housing and continue to receive help in various
areas, including language study, vocational training, and social
integration.
In fact, most of the immigrants stayed in absorption centers for
more than one year.
The reason given for the decision to task the Jewish Agency with
the absorption of Ethiopian immigrants, rather than to apply the direct
absorption policy, was the immigrants' low educational level and

lack of resources upon arrival. It may also have been due to the absence
in Israel of a critical mass of old-timers of Ethiopian extraction who
could function as guides in the direct absorption process.
An additional factor deserves mention: immigration from Ethiopia
was a lifesaver for the institutions of the Jewish Agency, which were on
the verge of dismantlement. Since the direct integration of former
Soviet immigrants left the Agency with nothing to do, the Agency was
about to hand over its traditional role in immigrant absorption,
including absorption centers, to the government. The Ethiopian immigrant
absorption project gave the Jewish Agency's absorption apparatus a
new lease on life and funneled tens of millions of dollars--from the
U.S. government, the Israeli government, and American Jewish
philanthropy--into its coffers (Lazin, 1997: 45-46).
The Dispersion Policy
The Ethiopian immigrant absorption policy was influenced by the
bitter residues of the absorption of immigrants from Arab countries in
the 1950s and 1960s. Those immigrants were sent upon arrival to
temporary camps, transit camps, and development towns that were
typically far from centers of employment and culture, provided no more
than rudimentary public services, and offered little opportunity for
personal or collective advancement. To keep the problems of the 1950s
from recurring, the government declared its wish to send the Ethiopian
immigrants to fifty localities that ranked on the middle, rather than
the bottom, of the socioeconomic scale. The Ministry of Immigrant
Absorption even stipulated that efforts should be made to avoid having
more than thirty to fifty Ethiopian households in one neighborhood and

more than two or three Ethiopian households in one building or building

entrance. In 1991, it was stipulated that Ethiopian immigrants should
not constitute more than 2-4 percent of the population of an y
neighborhood or locality (Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, 1985: 49-53;
Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, 1991: 20-21).
It was also decided that Ethiopian immigrants would not be sent to
localities in the two lowest clusters of the socioeconomic scale:
"It is recommended that these immigrants be sent to localities that
have sufficiently strong community infrastructure in education,
employment, and socio-community services.... They should not be imposed
on communities that have difficulty sustaining themselves"
(Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, 1985: 47).
The localities on the original list were chosen because they
belonged in the "average" socio-economic category, i.e., they
were neither particularly poor nor particularly rich. A few more
localities, such as Kiryat Malakhi, where Ethiopian immigrants who had
settled before Operation Moses wished to be joined by relatives more
recently arrived, were added to the list.
The list shown above was supplemented by an inventory of
neighborhoods in major cities that were also defined as suitable for
Ethiopian immigrants: Kiryat Hayyim, Kiryat Shemuel, and Kiryat
Eliezer/Bat Galim in Haifa; Ramot, Kiryat Hayovel, East Talpiot, Pisgat
Ze'ev, Givat Mordechai, and Gilo in Jerusalem; and Yad Eliyahu in
Tel Aviv (ibid.: 49).
The 1985 absorption plan for Ethiopian immigrants stressed the
avoidance of concentrations of recent immigrants from Ethiopia. It

stated explicitly that absorption centers serving as temporary housing

for Ethiopian immigrants should not be turned into permanent housing,
lest this result in too many immigrants in those localities (ibid.: 49,
52).
The Ministry of Immigrant Absorption's 1991 policy document
reiterated the principle of dispersion that had guided policy in 1985
and made minor adjustments in the list of recommended localities in view
of the settlement patterns of the Ethiopian and former Soviet immigrants
who had come after 1985. The 1991 document placed stronger emphasis on
the importance of settling Ethiopian immigrants in major cities and the
center of the country. Moreover, in response to the tendency of
Operation Moses immigrants to prolong their stay in absorption centers,
the document recommended moving immigrant families into permanent
housing as soon as possible after their arrival: "Absorption
centers should cease being a structured stage of the absorption process
and should serve as temporary transit housing only for immigrants who
are waiting for family reunification or permanent housing"
(Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, 1991: 3).
Policy vs. Reality
Despite the declared policy of dispersion, Ethiopian Israelis now
live, as stated, in several relatively large concentrations in a few
localities (CBS, 2001 [A]). Furthermore, a large proportion of the
immigrants found permanent housing in localities and neighborhoods that
ranked low on the socioeconomic scale: Kiryat Malakhi; Netivot; Ofakim;
Kiryat Moshe in Rehovot, the Gimmel, Vav, and Het neighborhoods of
Ashdod, the Pe'er neighborhood of Hadera; Kiryat Nordau, Azorim and

Shikun Hefzi-Bah in Netanya; Givat Hamoreh and Upper Afula in Afula; and
the Shimshon and Atikot neighborhoods of Ashkelon. Israel's two
largest cities, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, have very small populations of
Ethiopian origin: about 1,000 in Jerusalem and only several hundred in
Tel Aviv (ibid.).
At the end of 1999, seven localities had concentrations of 3,000
immigrants or more: Netanya, Rehovot, Haifa, Hadera, Ashdod, Ashkelon,
and Beersheva.
How Did This Happen?
There are several reasons for the high concentration of Ethiopian
Israelis. First, most immigrants in Operation Moses who had no resources
of their own were referred to rental housing in public dwellings, which,
of course, are located mainly in development towns and socioeconomically
low-ranking urban neighborhoods. Second, at the time of Operation Moses,
four absorption centers in such localities (Upper Nazareth, Ashkelon,
and two centers in Afula) were converted into permanent housing - in
contravention of an explicit recommendation in the 1985 policy document
and without asking the tenants what their own preferences were. The
decision may have been made due to a lack of sufficient resources to
implement the official policy. It also seems that the Finance Ministry
refused to provide the funding needed to move the immigrants out of the
absorption centers (Banai, 1988, cited by Ribner and Shindler, 1996:
83). Third, when the second and larger influx came in Operation Solomon,
the immigrants (after a brief sta y in hotels) were housed in mobile
home sites that were built in rural areas or industrial areas near major
cities. (Lazin, 1997: 51). These sites had been created for former

Soviet immigrants, who either refused to live in mobile homes or quickly

moved out. Thus, Ethiopian immigrants were directed to this handy stock
of housing instead of to options that, although more expensive,
corresponded more closely to official policy.
The Special Mortgage Program
The most important action in determining the location and quality
of Ethiopian Israelis' housing, beyond all doubt, is the homebuying
promotion campaign that the government undertook by offering especially
generous mortgages to Ethiopian immigrants. Notably, this has been the
government's most meaningful positive measure in regard to the
absorption of Ethiopian immigrants in Israel. The operation, engineered
by the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption under Yair Tsaban, was conceived
in response to a hunger march by Operation Solomon immigrants who were
living in mobile homes at a resort village in Ashkelon. The marchers
demanded that Yitzhak Rabin's new government honor an election
campaign promise by Ariel Sharon, Minister of Housing in the previous
Likud-led government, to assure them permanent housing within thirty
days of the electoral victory, were he to achieve one (Tsaban, 2001).
As part of the homebuying promotion, the government offered
Operation Solomon immigrants and others who were still living in mobile
homes (mainly families) government mortgages commensurate with family
size (the largest mortgages going to families with four children or
more), to a maximum of $110,000 and up to 99 percent of dwelling price.
The monthly installments would be relatively low (NIS 150 per month) and
most of the loan (80 percent) would become a grant at the end of fifteen
years.

The creator of the plan, Yair Tsaban, considered it advantageous

from two points of view. First, it would allow Ethiopian immigrants to
become property owners. Second, it would settle them in localities on
the middle rungs of the socioeconomic ladder in the center of the
country, near centers of employment, and not in peripheral localities or
disadvantaged urban neighborhoods. Tsaban rejected a proposal from the
Ministry of Construction and Housing to settle the Operation Solomon
immigrants in unoccupied dwellings in peripheral development towns that
had been built for former Soviet immigrants who did not want them. (The
5,000 dwellings available in such localities approximated the number of
Ethiopian-origin households that were waiting for permanent housing.)
The Ministry of Finance agreed to fund the operation in the belief
that no more than 500 dwellings would be sold this way (Tsaban, 2001).
In fact, however, nearly sixteen times as many were sold: Ethiopian
immigrants purchased some 3,500 dwellings between June 1993 and the end
of 1995 (Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, 1996:50) and an additional
3,400 by March 2001 (Ministry of Construction and Housing, 2001 [A]).
Since 1994, the budget book of the Ministry of Construction and
Housing has shown the cost of the homebuying promotion on a separate
budget line, thereby allowing us to monitor the budget costs. Thus,
between 1994 and 2001, the Ministry of Construction and Housing
allocated NIS 2.2 billion (in 2000 prices) for mortgages for Ethiopian
immigrants (Swirski et al., 2001: 34). In 1994 - 2000, actual
expenditure overran the allocation by 5 percent on average; performance
data for 2001 have not yet been released. The graph below presents the
data and compares allocation with performance.

In September 1995, the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption augmented

the mortgage program by adding a ranking of localities based on average
dwelling cost. The amounts and terms of mortgages were set commensurate
with locality rankings and family size. Mortgages in localities where
housing prices were especially high were increased. The largest
mortgages were given in the following localities: Bat Yam, Bene Berak,
Even Yehuda, Ganei Tikva, GivaLayim, Givat Sbmuel, Givat Ze'ev,
Herzliya, Hod Hasharon, Holon, Jerusalem, Kefar Sava, Kiryat Ono,
Ma' ale Adummim, Mevasseret Zion, Ness Ziyyona, Netanya, Or Yehuda,
Petah Tikva, Ra'ananna, Ramat Gan, Ramat Hasharon, Rehovot, Rishon
Lezion, Rosh ha-Ayin, Tel Aviv, and Yehud. In these localities,
mortgages were set at MS 235,000 for childless couples, MS 300,000 for
families with up to three children, and MS 365,000 for families with
four or more children. The other localities were divided into five
categories ranked by dwelling cost, and the mortgages were adjusted to
dw elling cost and family size (Ministry of Immigrant Absorption,
September 21, 1995; Ministry of Finance, September 20, 1995). At the
beginning of the special mortgage operation, it was stipulated that
immigrants would be eligible for special mortgages for a period of seven
years after receiving immigrant status. A 2000 document from the
Ministry of Immigrant Absorption (Ministry of Immigrant Absorption,
2000: 4) extended the term of eligibility for those who had immigrated
between September 1989 and the end of June 2001. As of the present
writing (December 2001), the program remains in effect and no date of
termination has been set. Notably, in addition to the mortgage subsidy
budget, the government allocates funds for the acquisition of dwellings

for Ethiopian immigrants under public housing rental terms. This is done
in localities that have no appropriate public dwellings. A special
budget line has been recorded for this purpose since 1993. The dwellings
at issue are for disabled, ill, and elderly persons wh o are found
eligible for public housing by a medical board; the rent is low. The
total budget allocation for the acquisition of dwellings for Ethiopian
immigrants between 1993 and 2001 was MS 346 million, in 2000 prices (no
performance data are available) (Adva Center analysis of Ministry of
Finance, Budget Provisions, Ministry of Construction and Housing).
Outcome of the Special Mortgage Program
The special mortgage operation had an important outcome: today,
most Ethiopian Israeli households own their homes. There is no doubt
that few would have been able to accomplish this without generous
government assistance. However, the operation did not attain one of the
main goals of the housing policy: settling the Ethiopian immigrants in
middle-income localities.
When the special mortgage operation began, the intention was to
refer homebuyers to fifty-two predetermined localities. It quickly
became clear, however, that most purchases were made in fewer places.
After the immigrants themselves applied pressure, localities that
already had concentrations of Ethiopian Israelis were added to the list.
In one case, an immigrant petitioned the High Court of Justice (in
conjunction with the Association of Ethiopian Immigrant Organizations),
alleging that the plan did not allow him to acquire a dwelling in the
location of his choosing (Tsaban, 2001).
The extra-large mortgages helped many immigrants to settle website link in the

center of the country, but the dwellings they bought were located on the
social and economic periphery of that center. Thus, more than 56 percent
of dwellings acquired in the first period after the plan was announced
(816 out 1,342) were in disadvantaged neighborhoods (Israel Association
for Ethiopian Jews, 1994: 2). In the aftermath of these initial
findings, the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews warned of the need
to take immediate action to change the trend. Its recommendations
included the following:
(1) Increase the mortgage allocation for immigrants who wish to buy
dwellings in greater Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa by $20,000.
(2) Distribute information about the plan to Ethiopian immigrants
by means of a video film, workshops on homebuying, a telephone hotline
in Amharic to answer homebuyers' questions, a television and radio
program in Amharic, etc.
(3) Arrange for volunteers to help homebuyers. The Israel
Association for Ethiopian Jews noted, in its interim report, that it was
prepared to organize the "matchmaking" activity and to produce
the video film, provided that the government covered the cost (ibid.:
6).
Notably, the mortgage program was designed in close consultation
with the Association of Ethiopian Immigrant Organizations, a nonprofit
umbrella entity made up of seven Ethiopian immigrant organizations and
headed by then Member of Knesset Adissu Massaleh. Even before the
operation went into effect, Massaleh warned, "We've got to
make sure that every immigrant is closely assisted at all phases of
homebuying, from beginning to end, including home visits to the new

dwelling [after moving in]" (letter from Massaleh to Tsaban,

December 14, 1992). According to Yair Tsaban, Minister of Immigrant
Absorption at the time, the ministry did make efforts to assist
immigrants in the homebuying process. However, so many households needed
assistance -- each in a different location - that it became a mission
impossible (Tsaban, 2001). In contrast, Micha Odenheimer, founder of the
Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews, claims that the ministry assigned
immigrants only a small number of interpreters and was unwilling to help
p ay lawyers' fees (Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews, July 24,
2001). Adissu Massaleh, now a former Member of Knesset and chair of the
Association of Ethiopian Immigrant Organizations, voices similar
criticism. He says the immigrants should have been paired with
homebuying coordinators who would refer them to better-off neighborhoods
and localities. Massalah's organization presented the government
with a proposal to include a ranking component in the mortgage plan, so
that those who wished to buy homes in better neighborhoods would receive
larger mortgages. According to Massaleh, a whole year passed until the
plan was adopted (Massaleh, 2001).
The concentration of homebuying in socioeconomically weak
neighborhoods and localities was abetted by various intermediaries,
including several earlier immigrants from Ethiopia, who regarded the
generous government allocation as an opportunity for profit. From the
standpoint of these go-betweens, the most alluring deals were actually
in disadvantaged neighborhoods and development towns, where housing
prices were relatively low. As soon as the size of the mortgage was
known, housing prices in these localities aligned themselves with the

largest government mortgage offered. The brokers played an active role

in effecting this alignment (Tsaban, 2001). In a meeting at Ministry of
Immigrant Absorption headquarters in March 1994, inflation of housing
prices and real estate assessments were reported, as was the inclusion
of components such as home appliances and brokers' fees in the
dwelling price (Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, 1994).
The relatively high sale price enabled the sellers - most of whom
had immigrated from Arab countries in the 1950s and 1960s - to upgrade
their housing conditions. Ethiopian immigrants found themselves buying
dwellings at inflated prices in cheap tenement neighborhoods.
Furthermore, the very concentration of numerous Ethiopian-origin
families in a given locality or neighborhood helped to lower housing
prices there. According to Micha Feldman, a former Jewish Agency
emissary to Ethiopia and afterwards a consultant on the community's
acculturation, Ethiopian immigrants paid $100,000 for apartments that
are worth $50,000 today (Feldman, 2001).
Activists in the Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews agree that
some people defrauded the immigrants and profiteered at their expense.
They claim, however, that the mortgages offered to the immigrants,
irrespective of their generosity, sufficed to finance home purchases in
slums but not in middle-class neighborhoods. The researcher Fred Lazin
concurs, stating that the government ultimately created immigrant
concentrations by its own actions - first by referring immigrants to
absorption centers and mobile home sites, and later on by creating the
mortgage program. Even though Ethiopian immigrants were offered larger
mortgages than other Israelis, they were not given enough to buy housing

in middle-class neighborhoods (Lazin, 1997: 41). Government assistance

enabled Ethiopian immigrants to become homeowners, but the homes they
own are cheap and probably cannot serve as the springboard to better
housing in the foreseeable future. Activists in the Israel Association
for Ethiopian Jews argued, in retrospect, that home ownership also has a
disadvantage: it destines the immigrants and their offspring to live in
impoverished neighborhoods (Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews, 2001
[B]).
Long-Term Need for the Special Mortgage Program
Young Singles
According to the Ministry of Construction and Housing regulations,
people under the age of twenty-five who arrive in Israel with their
parents, or whose parents come to Israel within one year of their own
immigration, do not receive housing rights as singles; instead, they are
recorded in their parents' immigrant papers. In late 1995, Yak
Tsaban warned about the need to solve the housing problems of singles
who were living in mobile home sites (Tsaban, 1995). The Israel
Association for Ethiopian Jews suggested that the housing entitlements
be extended to singles under age twenty-five (Israel Association for
Ethiopian Jews, undated [B]:2). The Association also urged the
government to find new solutions for "young people, some of whom
are orphans and others who were separated from their families in the
lengthy immigration process, and who today are in various phases of
life, such as soldiers, students, young adults after military service
(some working, others not)" (The Israel Association for Ethiopian
Jews, un dated [B]). The Association's proposals include the

provision of especially large mortgages for single immigrants who do not

live in mobile homes (increased mortgages are in fact available for
single immigrants who do live in mobile homes) and working singles, plus
the provision of public housing for unemployed young people (including
the preservation of homebuying eligibility in the future) (activists in
Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews, 2001 [B]).
Post-Operation-Solomon Immigrants
Between 1992 and 2000, Israel received an annual average of about
2,500 immigrants from Ethiopia. Since these are significantly lower
figures than those of Operation Solomon (although the total is greater),
one would expect them to receive better treatment. The recent arrivals,
however, seem to have encountered the same old problems. The two main
problems are the continuing tendency to buy housing in disadvantaged
neighborhoods and the lack of information and support in the homebuying
process (Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews, undated [A]: 1). Another
problem is lack of coordination between central-government offices that
serve immigrants and municipal authorities in localities where the
immigrants buy housing (Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews, 2001 [A]:
1).
A New Problem: Home Maintenance
Housing problems do not end when the purchase contract is signed;
housing expenses also include home maintenance. Since Ethiopian
immigrants are largely a low-income group, the physical state of the
dwellings they acquired has deteriorated over time (Hovav, 2001).
Notably, many of those dwellings were in poor condition to begin with.
Housing Upgrade

The data we examined show that the Ethiopian Israeli community is

concentrated in a small number of localities, in socioeconomically weak
neighborhoods, and in cheap housing that, in some cases, is
deteriorating. Since most Ethiopian Israelis subsist on low incomes--we
focus on this in the next chapter this picture is unlikely to change
quickly. In fact, there is a strong likelihood that the level and value
of their housing will decrease further.
As noted above, the flow of Ethiopian immigrants to development
towns and disadvantaged neighborhoods, armed with relatively generous
mortgages, allowed Israelis who had reached the country in previous
waves of immigration and had found it difficult to improve their housing
conditions to move into better housing. These Israelis regarded the
advent of the Ethiopian newcomers as a long-awaited miracle. The
question is whether a policy geared to improving Ethiopian
Israelis' standard of housing can be based on the expectation that
such a miracle will recur.
Organizations of Ethiopian Israelis have proposed several
solutions. One is that the government buy back the apartments from the
immigrants and give them new mortgages with which they may move to
better neighborhoods. The Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews has
proposed that the government enable immigrants to leave the slums by
providing new housing loans and allowing immigrants to apply existing
mortgages to new dwellings (Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews,
undated [A]). The Ministry of Immigrant Absorption is also
"discussing ideas and proposals [...] to provide special grants and
loans that will allow immigrants to move out of problematic areas"

(Brookdale Institute, 2001:12).

Most Ethiopian immigrants earn so little, however, that one cannot
but doubt the viability of these ideas. Even if they receive more
generous mortgages than they have already obtained, most will still be
unable to acquire housing in middle--and upper-income neighborhoods.
Another possible avenue of government intervention is Project
Renewal. It is known that Project Renewal, initiated in the late 1970s,
did not change the socioeconomic status of the inhabitants of
neighborhoods where it was implemented, and there is no reason to expect
different results in the new neighborhoods of Ethiopian Israelis. It
might, however, be worth exploring the possibility of upgrading whole
neighborhoods by means of neighborhood organizations, in conjunction
with the municipal authority, the Ministry of Construction and Housing,
and twin cities abroad, where the emphasis is on human services rather
than on plaster.
As possibilities of improving existing households' housing
conditions are examined, options that might help the young generation
should also be weighed. One of the most important proposals in this
context is to extend the eligibility for increased mortgages to the
immigrants' offspring, who are ineligible today because they are
considered nonimmigrant Israelis in respect to homebuying (Israel
Association for Ethiopian Jews, undated [A]). In Israel, nonimmigrant
young couples who wish to buy housing usually turn to their parents for
assistance, and those who cannot obtain help from that source have to
settle for housing in the geographical or social periphery. (See, for
example, Spilerman, 1997). Since young Ethiopian Israelis cannot avail

themselves of parental aid, if the state takes an interest in their

integration and advancement, it should give them the assistance that
their parents cannot provide. Otherwise, the second generation will
improve its housing conditions on an individual basis only-an option t
hat will be available to few in the foreseeable future.
Another possibility to consider for the young generation is the
establishment of community settlements. This option was not explored
seriously when the Ethiopian Jews immigrated, since the dominant concept
was of dispersion and assimilation amidst the nonimmigrant population.
However, now that community settlements have become a normative path of
housing upgrade for members of the nonimmigrant urban middle class, they
should be considered for young people of Ethiopian extraction as well.
The initiative to establish such settlements, if spearheaded by young
members of the community and backed with government assistance, will
constitute a statement by Ethiopian Israelis that their community has
something to contribute to Israeli society.
Employment
If geographic concentration was the policymakers' main concern
in regard to housing, the chief source of worry with respect to
employment was that "an entire ethnic group would gather at
society's lowest stratum" (Ministry of Immigrant Absorption,
1985: 57).
Accordingly, the integration programs placed strong emphasis on
vocational training. However, unlike the government's strenuous
effort in the housing field, which made the immigrants into property
owners albeit sometimes overpriced property - the government assistance

matrix in the employment field did not enrich the immigrants as

expected.
The architects of the assistance system derived their inspiration
from anachronistic conceptions, especially concerning the ostensibly
vast cultural distance between "traditional societies" and
"Western society." A common reflection of this mindset was the
metaphor that depicted Ethiopian Jews' immigration to Israel as
"a leap from the Middle Ages into the twenty-first century."
By the time the Ethiopian Jews reached Israel, however, the
globalization of labor markets and manufacturing had obfuscated
demarcation lines that had once been perceived as hard to cross.
Millions of workers from the Third World, including African countries,
have migrated to Western countries in search of work and managed to
integrate into "Western" economies without the mediation of
any government training system. Furthermore, since the 1970s Western
multinational corporations have been establishing production lines in
"traditional" countries and using local workers there to
manufacture high-tech electronic products, among other thi ngs. The same
has happened in Israel, where a "Western" economy has managed
to employ hundreds of thousands of labor migrants in agriculture,
construction, and personal services. These workers, born and raised in
countries that are typified as "agrarian" and socially
"traditional," have easily found their niche in the labor
market. What is more, their employers have been pressuring the
government incessantly to allow them to bring over more and more
workers. One may say much the same about Palestinian workers, who had

been employed in Israel en masse before and even after the first
Intifada.
Nevertheless, the crafters of Israel's immigrant absorption
policy assumed that "Placing the Ethiopian immigrants in work was a
unique challenge for Israeli society, the immigrant assistance systems,
and the nonimmigrants. The Ethiopian immigrant population could not
simply be integrated into the existing employment systems; instead,
totally new niches and methods had to be developed" (Brookdale
Institute, 2001 [A]: 41).
Beyond the culture rhetoric, however, the immigrant absorption
policymakers' main practical concern evidently had to do with the
possibility that Ethiopian Jews would fail to hold their own in the
severely polarized labor market that took shape in Israel in the 1980s
and 1990s. This market consists of two parts: one including persons with
a higher education, and another with persons with secondary schooling or
less.
The wages of the latter have been eroding rapidly relative to the
wages of the former; many Israeli wage earners do not make a decent
living. To illustrate: the proportion of Israeli households headed by
wage earners that are at or below the poverty line rose from 21 percent
in 1989 to 34.8 percent in 1999. National Insurance benefits managed to
lift about half of these households above the poverty line (Swirski and
KonurAttias, 2001: 15). Furthermore, many workers are inadequately
protected. The Histadrut, stripped of most of its assets, has been
severely weakened, the state does not enforce its own laws, such as the
Minimum Wage Law, and employers are making increasing use of employment

modalities that circumvent collective agreements, such as

subcontracting. Employers have also learned to exploit competition among
nonimmigrant workers, recent immigrants, Palestinians, and labor
migrants, and some have even moved production lines to neighboring
countries.
Thus, immigrant-absorption policymakers were concerned that the
Ethiopian immigrants would sink to the bottom of Israel's
occupational and wage scale and, by so doing, belie the implicit Zionist
promise that Jews from "distressed countries," by the very act
of immigrating to Israel, could look forward to a better and more secure
life. This is why the authorities emphasized the need to develop
"totally new niches and methods" for Ethiopian Israelis. The
response adopted by the state was Zionist indeed: for Jewish immigrants,
and for them alone, the state created two assistance mechanisms that are
available neither to labor migrants from faraway coun tries nor to
Palestinian workers. One is the vocational training and job placement
system; the other is the set of National Insurance benefits that
supports people who cannot find their place in the labor market, as well
as those who manage to find work but only at wage levels that do not
suffice for a basic living as defined by the National Insurance
Institute. Below we deal only with the vocational training system for
Ethiopian immigrants; we will not discuss the National Insurance system.
Vocational Training Policy
Acting at the government's behest, the Ministry of Immigrant
Absorption prepared two master plans for the absorption of Ethiopian
immigrants - one in 1985, for Operation Moses, and another in 1991, for

Operation Solomon. The first plan defined its goal in the employment
field as follows: "Vocational training is an essential condition in
the vocational integration of Ethiopian immigrants; without it, they
will find themselves at the bottom of the employment scale"
(Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, 1985: 9).
The 1985 master plan recommended the training of Ethiopian Israelis
in four specific fields: (a) metal, motor vehicle, lumber, electricity,
and electronics; (b) nursing; (c) hotels; (d) the garment industry. In
the opinion of the program developers, these occupations "entail
vocational skills that may be inculcated in [this] population group,
despite its typical [low] level of schooling" (Ministry of
Immigrant Absorption, 1985: 61). It should be noted that labor migrants
("foreign workers") and Palestinians hold jobs in these
trades, with no prior training whatsoever.
Accordingly, the ministry developed "a concept favoring
intensive, long-term action [...] a multi-phase process that should be
planned as a continuum, in which periods of work and periods of training
or in-service training take place in an integrated or alternating
fashion. The process should be spread over several years ..."
(Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, 1985: 57).
The program included two periods of "pre-training," i.e.,
preparation for vocational training courses. One term coincided with the
last three months of the immigrants' six-month Hebrew language
course; the second was a three-month term of full-time study. Then came
vocational training courses, offered in three settings: boarding
schools, regular courses of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs,

and in-plant training (ibid.: pp. 68 - 69).

The courses were attended mainly by Ethiopian immigrant men; women
were a minority. The Ministry of Immigrant Absorption attributed this
(among other factors) to language difficulties caused by women's
irregular participation in the Hebrew program, since they were burdened
with young children. However, a researcher who conducted a lengthy
observation in absorption centers blamed the paucity of women on a
discriminatory policy applied by the managers of the centers, who chose
only one member of each family unit, usually the male, for vocational
training. The managers justified this decision by claiming that it
corresponded to the immigrants' own tradition and culture (Herzog,
1998: 102).
The policy of prolonged training was widely criticized. It was
argued, for example, that this acculturation process, instead of
facilitating dynamic adjustment to the host society, made the immigrants
dependent on the absorption apparatus (Halper, 1987). Concurrently, the
absorption centers were portrayed as gloomy places where Ethiopian
immigrants acquired much of their dependency on the immigrant-absorption
bureaucracy (Herzog, 1998; see also Ministry of Immigrant Absorption,
1991:12).
It seems that the Ministry of Immigrant Absorption changed its
policy only a short time after it put together the three-phase training
program. According to the State Comptroller, "In the middle of
November 1985, the ministry crafted a new policy [...] after judging
that the Hebrew language studies and pre-training courses were not
attaining their goals. Central in the new policy is the belief that each

immigrant should be helped to find work as quickly as possible to assure

his acculturation in Israel" (State Comptroller, 1988: 498).
Several years later, in 1991, as the government braced itself for the
second large wave of Jews from Ethiopia in Operation Solomon, the
Ministry of Immigrant Absorption unveiled a new policy. The main
innovation was a shorter set of transitional phases, including
absorption centers and training courses, and an earlier entry into the
labor market. The new policy was depicted as the product of lessons
learned from the experience in integrating the Operation Moses
immigrants. Its a uthors admitted that "No findings give clear
indication that participating in the [lengthy training] process ... made
a significant contribution to [the immigrants'] occupational
integration" (Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, 1991: 32).
The change in policy was also influenced by the social structure of
the Operation Solomon immigrants. Unlike the Operation Moses immigrants,
who reached Israel alone or in fragmented families after a lengthy trek
and a protracted stay in refugee camps, most Operation Solomon
immigrants arrived in intact families and after an orderly stay in a
transit camp in Addis Ababa (Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, 1991: 3).
Importantly, too, the Ethiopian Israeli community had grown by 1991
to some 24,000 "old-timers" who could help receive the
newcomers. What is more, a set of community organizations that could
mediate between the government and the community had formed (ibid.: 13).
The new plan spoke of referring the immigrants to the job market
immediately after completion of the Hebrew language course. It
differentiated among three groups: about 900 immigrants who had acquired

formal schooling in Ethiopia and would be referred to vocational

courses; some 1,100 immigrants who exhibited "good learning
potential" and would be referred directly to major employers -
including selected ones such as the phone company, the Israel Electric
Corporation, Histadrut-owned enterprises, the Prisons Service, and large
construction companies--for in-plant training; and 1,000 - 1,500
immigrants who had "poor learning aptitude" and would be sent
directly into the labor market. The planners expected the latter group
"to subsist mainly on National Insurance benefits or to find
temporary employment in seasonal or very simple jobs" (ibid.: 34).
The next section examines the employment statistics of Ethiopian
Israelis on the basis of the 1999 labor force surveys of the Central
Bureau of Statistics. Although the data do not enable us to gauge the
utility of the vocational training programs, it seems that the
importance of government programs, of whatever kind, falls short of two
other observable factors: length of time in the country and level of
schooling. The longest tenured Ethiopian immigrants, those who arrived
in the 1980s, have a higher rate of labor force participation than those
of the 1990s, outperformed them in obtaining white-collar jobs, and are
less prone to unemployment. It also seems that the only Ethiopian
immigrants who moved into white-collar occupations are young people who
acquired their schooling in Israel.
Ethiopian Israelis in the Labor Market: 1999
Labor-Force Participation of Ethiopian Israelis Aged 25 - 54
In 1999, there were 14,778 Israelis of Ethiopian extraction aged 25
- 54. Only slightly more than half of them (53 percent) participated in

the labor force, compared to 76 percent of all Israelis in this age

bracket (calculated from CBS, 2001 [F]: Table 4). Ethiopian Israelis
have a low labor force participation rate mainly because of the low
participation of Ethiopian women. The participation rate of men aged 25-
54 is 71 percent (compared to 84 percent of Israeli men at large in the
same age group) but that of women is 38 percent (compared to 68 percent
of all Israeli women in that age group) (calculated from ibid.).
Who Participates More in the Labor Force 1980s Immigrants or 1990s
Immigrants?
The government invested both time and money in efforts to find a
place for Ethiopian immigrants in the labor market. Furthermore, as
noted above, it adjusted the method after the first large wave of
immigration to increase the immigrants' labor force participation
rate. The 1985 master plan was based on a lengthy Hebrew language course
and a relatively long period of vocational training; the 1991 plan
shortened both phases.
At first glance, and since everyone thought the approach in 1991
was better than that of 1985, we would expect the 1 990s immigrants to
exhibit a better employment record than the 1980s immigrants. The
figures, however, tell a different story. Table 7 presents the Ethiopian
Israelis' labor force participation rate by period of immigration.
It shows that the total labor force participation rate of the 1980s
immigrants, 60 percent, surpasses that of the 1990s immigrants, 44
percent.
Who is not in the Civilian Labor Force?
As shown in Figures 3 and 4, 47 percent of Ethiopian Israelis aged

25-54 do not even participate in the labor force. Before we go on to

examine the employment of Ethiopian Israelis who do participate, let us
survey the nonparticipants.
The table below repeats a point noted above: nonparticipation in
the labor force is more prevalent among women (62 percent) than among
men (29 percent). Comparing the two periods of immigration, we find that
Operation Solomon immigrants have a higher nonparticipation rate than
Operation Moses immigrants 56 percent as against 40 percent.
Finally, the table shows a correspondence between schooling and
labor force participation: the nonparticipation rate is 66 percent among
those with no formal schooling, 35 percent among those who completed
primary or junior high school only, 29 percent among graduates of
vocational high schools, and 26 percent among graduates of academic high
schools. The nonparticipation rate of degree holders is surprisingly
high at 36 percent. The probable reason for this, in most cases, is that
the nonparticipants are still active students.
Where are Ethiopian Israelis Employed?
Ethiopian Israelis are most likely to be employed in manufacturing
and public services: In 1999, almost 40 percent of employed Ethiopian
Israelis worked in manufacturing and 28 percent worked in public
services. Another 12 percent were employed in trade, accommodation and
restaurant services and 8 percent worked in banking and business
activities.
Employment by Period of Immigration and Age Group
Table 10 shows that the rate of employment in manufacturing is high
and relatively stable in all age groups and among immigrants from both

Operation Moses and Operation Solomon.

In the public services, the second-largest employer of Ethiopian
Israelis, there are significant differences between the two immigration
groups and among the various age groups. The highest employment rate was
observed in Ethiopian Israelis aged 25 - 34 who immigrated in the 1980s
(i.e., young people educated in Israel) - 44 percent. In the
corresponding group among 1990s immigrants, the employment rate was only
6 percent. In the 35-44 age group that immigrated in the 1980s, the
employment rate was 32 percent, compared to 26 percent for those who
immigrated in the 1990s.
Labor Force Participation by Gender
Most Ethiopian Israelis employed in manufacturing are men: 49
percent of men aged 25 - 34, 44 percent of men aged 35 - 44, and 45
percent of men aged 45 - 54 held manufacturing jobs in 1999. Among
women, only slightly more than one-fourth of those in the 25 - 34 cohort
and a little more than one-third of women aged 45 - 54 worked in
manufacturing.
The largest employer of Ethiopian Israeli women is the public
service, which in 1999 employed 47 percent of women aged 25 - 34 and 58
percent of women aged 35 44. Among men, only 19 percent of members of
the 25 - 34 group and 22 percent of those aged 45 - 54 worked in the
public services.
The Occupations of Ethiopian Israelis
The large majority of Ethiopian Israelis - 76 percent of men and 62
percent of women - are employed as either "skilled workers"
(in agriculture and manufacturing) or as "unskilled workers."

Few Ethiopian Israelis - 4 percent of men and 15 percent of women -

are to be found in the academic, liberal, and technical professions.
Academic occupations include, but are not limited to, university
lecturers and researchers, practitioners of the liberal professions,
persons with academic occupations in the humanities, and teachers at the
post-secondary and post-primary levels. Liberal and technical
professions include practical engineers, laboratory staff and operators
of technical instrumentation, teachers at the primary and preschool
levels, etc.
The relatively high share of women in liberal and technical
professions and white-collar occupations, mainly in the two youngest age
groups, is noteworthy. In contrast, all women employed in
"unskilled" occupations belong to the oldest age group.
The Occupations of Ethiopian Israelis in Three Economic Fields
Now we can merge the information about economic fields with that
concerning occupations. Some 39 percent of employed Ethiopian Israelis
hold jobs in manufacturing, and nearly all of them (92 percent) have
blue-collar positions, i.e., are either "skilled workers" or
"unskilled workers." A small minority engage in other
occupations, including 6 percent in white-collar jobs. No Ethiopian
Israeli in manufacturing is employed in academic, liberal, and technical
occupations.
In the public services - the second-largest employer of members of
the Ethiopian community - 30 percent are employed as either
"skilled workers" or "unskilled workers"; 31 percent
as agents, sales workers, or service providers (a category that includes

nursing caregivers, food service providers, and police and security

workers); 29 percent as practitioners of academic, liberal, or technical
occupations; and 10 percent as white-collar workers. Thus, only 39
percent of Ethiopian Israelis who work in the public services hold
pronouncedly white-collar positions, nearly one-third have blue-collar
jobs, and a little more than one third provide miscellaneous services.
Although banking is decidedly a white-collar industry, this field
employs Ethiopian Israelis mainly in service positions such as food
services and security, and as "unskilled workers."
Labor Force Participation by gender
Table 14 examines the participation of Ethiopian Israelis in
various occupations and economic fields gender. In manufacturing, most
persons employed - 93 percent of men and 90 percent of women - are
blue-collar workers ("skilled" or "unskilled"). Only
men hold white-collar jobs in manufacturing and only women work as
"agents, sales workers, and service providers." (Most such
employment, one presumes, is in food services)
In banking, all women are categorized as "unskilled
workers." In contrast, two-thirds of men in this industry are
defined as unskilled and one-third are "agents, sales workers, and
service providers" (most likely security guards).
In the public services, women account for a majority ad are
represented in most occupations. Their 29 percent share in the liberal
and technical professions is especially noteworthy.
Ethiopian Israelis in the Public Services: Joining the Mainstream?
The data we examined revealed a rather small group-several hundred

young people-who have found academic, liberal, technical, and clerical

positions in the public services. This group is noteworthy because it
has crossed the blue-collar barrier, that of workers "at the bottom
of the occupational scale," that so troubled the architects of the
immigrant absorption policy. Arguably, this is the main group that seems
to have joined the Israeli middle class.
The Central Bureau of Statistics does not tell us what jobs these
young people hold and in what fields they work. Our conversations with
activists suggest that most such jobs involve care for members of the
Ethiopian community itself, either in government offices or in municipal
authorities. As one of the activists expressed it, "The 1980s
immigrants found work thanks to the 1990s immigrants."
The labor force survey does not tell us whether their jobs are
permanent or temporary. One possibility is that, at least in some cases,
these ostensibly middleclass Ethiopian Israelis are employed in a rather
large number of "projects" for Ethiopian Jews run by various
government offices, mainly the ministries of Education, Immigrant
Absorption, and Construction and Housing. Additional projects are
conducted by social service associations that also belong to the public
services sector of the economy. These projects, by their very nature,
are budgeted for fixed periods of time and do not necessarily offer
access to permanent employment. From this standpoint, the 1999 figures
may indicate that these Ethiopian Israelis are engaged in temporary
positions and do not have a stable foothold. If this is so, then the
middle-class membership of this group depends on the continuation of
funding for government and public projects that aim to assist the

Ethiopian Israeli community. Even if this is the case, however, this

group has gained occupational and organizational experience along with
familiarity with Israel's governmental and public systems, from
which they will probably be able to derive benefits in the future.
Unemployment
Thus far, we have discussed Ethiopian Israelis in the 25-54 age
group who participate in the labor force and are employed. Now we move
on to consider participants in the labor force who were unemployed when
the 1999 Labor Force Survey was conducted.
The figures show that Ethiopian Israelis are more prone to
unemployment than Israelis at large. In 1999, 15 percent of Ethiopian
Israelis aged 25-54 in the labor force were jobless: 13 percent of men
and 18 percent of women. Corresponding rates for the Israeli population
at large were 8 percent (general population), 7 percent (men) and 8
percent (women) (CBS, 2001 [F]: Table 4). Ethiopian Israelis also had
higher unemployment rates than residents of some Arab localities and
several Jewish development towns.
In unemployment rates, as in other fields, immigrants from the
1980s have done much better than the 1990s immigrants; in 1999, the
unemployment rates among these two groups were 13 percent and 19
percent, respectively.
Finally, unemployment was more prevalent among persons with some
schooling-primary, junior-high, senior-high, and academic-than among
those who had never attended school or had attended school but received
no diploma. Perhaps people without formal qualifications find work more
easily, especially since they concentrate in blue-collar industries and

occupations, whereas those with some schooling encounter greater

difficulties because they have higher expectations concerning
appropriate employment.
Education and Employment
To conclude the chapter, let us examine the connection between
education and employment among Ethiopian Israelis. The figures in Table
15 show, generally, that the investment in schooling pays off for
Ethiopian Israelis as it does for the general Israeli population.
As one may see, almost all uneducated Ethiopian Israelis work as
either skilled or unskilled laborers in agriculture, manufacturing, and
other economic fields; only 9 percent work in a different category
("agents, sales workers, and service providers").
Most persons with primary and junior high schooling are also
employed as blue-collar workers-but at the slightly lower rate of 67
percent. About 15 percent of them work as agents, sales workers, and
service providers and 11 percent hold clerical jobs or practice liberal
or technical professions.
Blue-collar occupations are also prevalent among high school
graduates, but the share of such people in these fields -- 61 percent --
is slightly lower than that among persons with only primary and junior
high schooling. In contrast, 22 percent are employed as agents, sales
workers, and service providers and 17 percent work in pronouncedly
white-collar occupations.
Among those with post-secondary schooling, the proportion of
unskilled workers is much smaller tan among the previously mentioned
groups, at 24 percent. All the others -- 76 percent -- work in

occupations that correspond to some extent to their education level.

Finally, no Ethiopian Israeli with acedemic schooling is employed as an
unskilled worker; 75 percent of members of this group work in
pronouncedly white-collar occupations.
Ethiopian Israelis Aged 15-24 in the Labor Market Our main analysis
focused on Ethiopian Israeli men and women aged 24-54. However, quite a
few persons aged 15-24 also participate in the labor force. They deserve
our brief attention.
As Table 17 shows, one-fourth of Ethiopian Israelis aged 15-24
participate in the labor force. Among the Israeli population at large,
this age group has a higher participation rate, one-third (computed from
CBS, 1999 [F]: Table 4). Below we examine the data for three subgroups:
senior-high age (15-17), military service age (18-20), and
demobilization and post-secondary studies age (21-24).
In the 15-17 age group, the participation rate is a low but
significant 11 percent, slightly higher than that among the Israeli
population at large, 9 percent. The figure for Ethiopian Israelis is
somewhat consistent with data on the high dropout rates of Ethiopian
Israeli students (see chapter on education, below). Most boys who
participate in the labor force are employed; most girls are not. In the
subgroup of military service age, 10 percent of men and 30 percent of
women participate in the labor force. (We cannot compare these data with
corresponding figures for the population at large, since the CBS
releases only aggregate data on the 18-24 age group.)
Most (69 percent) women of military age who participate in the
civilian labor force actually work. In contrast, only a minority (16

percent) of military age men who participate in the civilian labor force
hold jobs. Apparently the other 84 percent of 18-20 year olds are young
people who were rejected by the army and also by the labor market.
In the post-army age group, labor force participation rises
significantly, to 40 percent for men and 45 percent for women. Several
factors may explain the lower rate among men, such as the larger number
of men who serve in the standing army.
Entrepreneurship
Thus far, we have used CBS data to present an employment picture
for Ethiopian Israelis. However, the figures do not tell the whole
story; censuses and surveys cannot reflect every type of economic
activity. For example, a position paper by the Institute for Jewish
Policy Research notes that "quite a few" Ethiopian immigrants,
mainly women, work informally at domestic jobs that they avoid
disclosing to the authorities in order to evade taxes or maintain
eligibility for National Insurance benefits (Kaplan and Salamon, 1999).
The researcher Haim Rosen used anthropological methods to probe a
business entrepreneurship phenomenon among some members of the
community--elderly men who visit Ethiopia regularly and import
commodities for sale in Israel, mainly to members of their community.
Although they are few in number and their businesses are small, Rosen
views this activity as evidence that many immigrants aspire to a higher
standard of living than the government vocational training system can
provide (Rosen, 2001: 25).
Alternatives
Discussions of Ethiopian Israelis' position in the Israeli

labor market usually focus on policy alternatives aimed specifically at

members of this community. We take a different view: the main path to
improvement, we believe, is a government policy that would focus on
bettering the lot of low-wage Israelis as a group. This involves a
long-term effort to raise wages, improve terms of employment, and
introduce compulsory pension insurance. From all these standpoints,
Ethiopian Israelis belong to the large stratum of Israelis who find it
difficult to support their families on their labor income. The point of
departure is effective enforcement of existing labor laws, since the
nonenforcement of these statutes today has facilitated the gradual
erosion of wages and terms of employment, not to mention an influx of
Palestinian workers and labor migrants who work under conditions that do
not meet the requirements of Israeli law.
The vocational training programs that evoked such high hopes when
the two waves of immigration from Ethiopia arrived in Israel have proven
to be of little utility. Recent neighborhood-level surveys by the
Brookdale Institute show that few people who attended the courses are
working today, or worked in the past, in the occupation they had learned
or in any occupation approximating it (see, for example, King and
Efrati, 2001: 9). Notably, nonimmigrant Israelis also use vocational
training courses, at least in some cases, more as refuges from temporary
unemployment than as a way to integrate into the labor market.
One occupational field deserves special attention: welleducated
Ethiopian Israelis who work in government offices, municipal
authorities, and non-profit organizations that offer assistance to the
Ethiopian community. As we have shown, this is the only group of

employed Ethiopian Israelis that has managed to gain a foothold in the

Israeli middle class. Unless these government programs and
community-level non-profit organizations continue to operate for at
least the next few years, this foothold will not last. In view of the
importance of this group (at both the leadership and the symbolic
levels) as a model for additional young people, the continued existence
of this occupational field, if not its expansion, should be assured.
Finally, the importance of government investment in education should be
noted. Among Ethiopian Israelis, like among Israelis generally, people
with a college education have a higher labor force participation rate
than the population at large and few find it difficult to support their
fam ilies on their labor income. Therefore, the various assistance and
reinforcement programs in education, discussed in the next section,
should be sustained if not expanded considerably.
Education
"The Lost Jews"
The Israeli education system determined where Ethiopian Israeli
youngsters would go to school long before their arrival. In 1973, Rabbi
Ovadia Yossef ruled that the "Falashas," as they were called
then, are "Jews who must be rescued [...] rushed to Israel, and
educated in the spirit of our holy Torah" (Elbaum and Weinstein,
1997: 202). In the aftermath of this ruling, the Law of Return was
applied to this community and official actions to bring Ethiopian Jewry
to Israel began (ibid.: 202-203). Even earlier, in the 1950s, the World
Zionist Organization Department for Torah Education and Culture in the
Diaspora numbered Ethiopian Jewry among the nidhei Yisrael ("the

lost Jews") (ibid.: 202), a categorization used primarily in

reference to Jewish communities in Asian and African countries.
In the early 1950s, a sharp conflict arose over which education
system would enroll the offspring of immigrants from Arab countries. The
two religious education systems in Israel, the State Religious (founded
by the Mizrahi movement, forerunner of the National Religious Party) and
the Independent (founded by the ultraorthodox Agudath Israel) vied for
the right to educate these youngsters in their schools. Both systems
argued that religious schools would meet the children's needs more
effectively than the secular state schools, since Jews in the Arab
sphere had lived in "traditional societies" and the majority
of them were religiously observant.
The conflict between the State Religious and the ultraorthodox
school systems over who would get the pupils from Arab countries led to
a severe political crisis that ended in 1953 with a compromise among the
political parties involved. The settlement awarded large segments of the
new student population to the State Religious system and to the
ultraorthodox system (see Swirski, 1991: 38-42). This outcome
strengthened both systems' claim that the children of Jews from
Asian and African countries "belonged" to them.
"The Lost Jews"
Property of the National Religious Party
The partisan strife of the 1950s makes it clear how it came about
that, when the decision to bring over Ethiopian Jewry was made two
decades later, "Everyone who dealt with this community saw clearly
that the provision of religious education [...] is the basis for

returning [the community] to Judaism and bringing it to the State of

Israel" (Elbaum and Weinstein, 1997: 203). When Operation Moses,
the first of the two large influxes from Ethiopia, began, "It was
decided, with the informed consent of the Prime Minister at the time,
Menachem Begin, that all Ethiopian immigrant children would be referred
to the State Religious system in the first years of their
acculturation" (Elbaum and Weinstein, 1997: 203). This decision was
formalized in a coalition agreement between the Likud and the National
Religious Party without any consultation with the Ethiopian Israeli
community (Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews, Stepchildren of the
Education System, 1995: 30). Uri Gordon, head of the Jewish Agency Youth
Aliyah De partment, supported the decision (Elbaum and Weinstein, 1997:
203).
Unlike the case of immigrant children from Arab countries in the
195 Os, education institutions associated with the National Religious
Party had a monopoly on those from Ethiopia. The ultraorthodox system
did not compete for the new pupil population "because its rabbis
took issue with the ruling that defined 'Falashas' as Jews and
that required them to undergo only a downscaled,
'just-to-be-sure' conversion procedure" (Elbaum and
Weinstein, 1997: 204); they did not consider them real Jews.
Furthermore, in contrast to the 1950s, when the Labor Movement and
the two religious systems vied for the enrollment of immigrant children
from Arab countries, in the 1980s, the State secular system (successor
to the Labor Movement system, among others) stepped aside and, without
putting up any resistance of consequence, allowed the State Religious

system to enroll the Ethiopian immigrant children.

Integration by Dispersion
The government's policy regarding Ethiopian immigrants in the
education system was typified by the declared intent of
"integrating" them mainly by dispersing them in small groups
among the nonimmigrant population. As we showed in previous chapters,
the integration-by-dispersion goal runs like a thread through most
government documents about Ethiopian Jews. In education, the dispersion
policy was manifested in guidelines to prevent Ethiopian pupils from
constituting more than 25 percent of enrollment in any class (State
Comptroller, 1998: 335). The dispersion goal was deemed so important
that the Ministry of Education made an extraordinary ruling: wherever
large concentrations of Ethiopian pupils amassed, they would be bused to
schools outside their places of residence (or referred to state secular
schools, if their parents so preferred) (ibid.).
Notably, the education system's commitment to dispersing the
immigrant pupils stemmed in part from practical administrative motives.
Since the immigrant students needed special attention in respect to
language, as well as other scholastic fields, the system wished to keep
them from becoming a heavy burden on the system. The education system
hardly departed from its routine patterns of activity in preparation for
these immigrants, the idea being, evidently, that dispersion would
enable it to avoid crises.
The education system might have absorbed these immigrants more
effectively had it deviated from its routine. For example, concentrating
the Ethiopian pupils, at least in the first phases, might have been

advantageous for their integration. It might have pressured the

education system to allocate special teaching resources (such as
experienced teachers with special training or training of teachers from
the Ethiopian community) or to base studies on the immigrant
children's language and the community's historical and
cultural narrative, in order to create scholastic contents with which
students could identify and a learning climate based on a sense of
community.
Concentration and Tracking
In contrast to its declared goal - integration reflected in
dispersion - at the practical level the education system created a very
high level of concentration of Ethiopian Israelis in a small number of
settings.
The decision to refer all youth of Ethiopian origin to the State
Religious system automatically confined them to a small number of
schools. In 1980, shortly before Operation Moses, only 19.4 percent of
all primary-level pupils and 22.2 percent of all high-school students
were attending the State Religious system (CBS, Statistical Abstract of
Israel 1981: Table 22/17). In 1990, shortly before Operation Moses, this
system, now reinforced by the Ethiopian immigrants from Operation Moses,
had 21.2 percent of primary enrollment and 18.4 percent of secondary
enrollment (CBS, Statistical Abstract of Israel, 1990: Table 22/18). In
2000, shortly before this report was written (and after the education
system had admitted tens of thousands of pupils from the former Soviet
Union, most of whom joined the State system), the State Religious system
constituted 19.2 percent of primary enrollment and 18.2 percent of

secondary enrollment (CBS, Statistical Abstract of Israel, 2000: Table

22/16). The referral of youngsters of Eth iopian extraction to the State
Religious system created a long-term trend. Data from the Central Bureau
of Statistics for the 1998/99 school year show that this system was
attended by 73.9 percent of all pupils of Ethiopian extraction that
year, compared to 18.9 percent of Israeli children at large. Some 25
percent of Ethiopian Israeli youngsters attended school in the State
system and only 0.4 percent were enrolled in ultraorthodox schools (CBS,
2001 [D]: Table 6).
Education Ministry figures for October 1999 show a similar picture:
of 14,523 school-age children who emigrated from Ethiopia after January
1980, nearly three-fourths - 10,367, or 71.4 percent - attended State
Religious schools (calculation made from Ministry of Education, 2000: 13
- 14).
Notably, the high concentration of Ethiopian Israeli pupils in the
State Religious system has been a long-term impediment to attempts to
consider and make changes, because the State Religious Education
Division has such a degree of autonomy within the Education Ministry
that it has been called a "ministry within a ministry." As
soon as the Ethiopian Israeli youngsters became part of the
Division's "empire," Ministry officials who were not
affiliated with the National Religious Party found it difficult to
intervene, and any issue related to the education of youngsters of
Ethiopian extraction led to intra-ministerial political tension (Israel
Association for Ethiopian Jews, 1995: 30-31).
The referral of Ethiopian Israeli youngsters to the State Religious

system is only the beginning of the story. Within the system itself,
Ethiopian youth are channeled into only certain parts of it, especially
its boarding schools. As early as Operation Moses in 1984, a decision
had already been made to refer all Ethiopian immigrants aged 12 - 17 to
the religious boarding schools affiliated with Youth Aliyah (Elbaum and
Weinstein, 1997: 204). In Israel, most boarding schools belong to the
religious education systems, including the ultraorthodox one. In 1989,
two-thirds of boarding schools belonged to the religious and
ultraorthodox school systems, and more than three-fourths of these were
affiliated with the State Religious system (Weil, 1997: 48).
Since the 1980s, Ethiopian Israelis have become an important
component in Israel's boarding school population. In 1999, 3,508 of
them were enrolled in such schools, and they constituted 31 percent of
the 11,366 youngsters who attended boarding schools countrywide
(Ministry of Education, 2000: 52; the reference is to pupils placed in
boarding schools inspected by the Rural Settlement Education Division of
the Ministry).
Thus boarding school education became typical of the secondary
schooling of young Ethiopian Israelis. According to a comprehensive
survey in 1997, 62 percent of Ethiopian Israeli boys aged 15 - 18 and 44
percent of girls attended boarding schools (Lifschitz, Noam, and Habib,
1998: 45). Notably, in recent years fewer Ethiopian Israelis have been
attending boarding schools and more have been enrolled in neighborhood
schools; the numbers in the former category declined from about 5,200 in
1991 to 4,200 in 1997 (Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews, 1998: 10)
and to 3,508 in 1999.

Within the matrix of State Religious boarding schools, Ethiopian

Israelis are sent to only a small number of institutions. Elbaum and
Weinstein, reporting on the enrollment of young people who immigrated to
Israel in Operation Moses in boarding schools, speak of "the
religious boarding schools and youth villages to which the Ethiopian
immigrants were referred" - reflecting the fact that the Ethiopian
youth were sent to certain schools only (Elbaum and Weinstein, 1997:
204). The same researchers reported that "Large concentrations of
Ethiopian immigrant students have formed. In several youth villages, 80
- 90 percent of the pupils are immigrants from Ethiopia. At Hofim
boarding school, all the students are from Ethiopia" (Elbaum and
Weinstein, 1997: 205).
The pattern persisted in later years. A comprehensive study by the
Brookdale Institute found that 55 percent of Ethiopian Israeli boarding
students attended classes in which more than 25 percent of pupils were
from Ethiopia, one third attended classes in the 25 - 50 percent range,
17 percent attended classes with an Ethiopian majority, and 5 percent
attended all-Ethiopian classes (Lifschitz, Noam, and Habib, 1998: 20).
High concentrations of Ethiopian Israeli pupils were more typical of
boarding schools than of other schools attended by Ethiopian Israeli
pupils (ibid.: 23). The last aspect of the concentration phenomenon
concerns the program of study: a large proportion of youngsters from
Ethiopia were channeled to vocational programs. A follow-up study on
young people who finished high school in the late 1980s found that most
were referred to boarding schools of middle or low prestige and that 70
percent of them were enrolled in vocational programs (Weil, 1997: 50).

Ten years later, in the 1998/99 school yea r, it was found that 2,206 of
the 4,940 Ethiopian-born students who attended schools at the senior
high level (46.4 percent) were enrolled in technological/vocational
programs, compared to 32.4 percent of the Israel-born. By adding the 681
students who were enrolled in agricultural programs, which are
vocational for all intents and purposes, we arrive at a total proportion
of 60.7 percent of Ethiopian Israelis studying in vocational tracks,
compared to 33.3 percent of the Israel-born students (CBS, 2001 [D]:
Table 7). Boys were more likely to take vocational or agricultural
programs than girls, at 70.1 percent and 51.3 percent, respectively
(ibid.).
Boarding School Education and Community Disintegration
The referral of young Ethiopian Israelis to boarding schools not
only helped to concentrate them in specific programs of study in a small
number of institutions, in contravention of the official goal of
dispersion; it also had far-reaching effects on the Ethiopian Israeli
family and community.
The practice of referral to boarding schools has marginalized the
role of Ethiopian Israeli parents in the shaping of their
children's education. At the beginning of Operation Moses, when a
large proportion of children arrived parentless, referral to boarding
schools was a reasonable option. However, when it became standard
operating procedure for all youngsters of Ethiopian extraction, it
amounted to a tacit statement by the state: we are depriving parents of
Ethiopian origin of their status as the agents responsible for raising
and educating their children and taking over this responsibility

ourselves.
Boarding school education need not be the result of coercion;
sometimes communities choose it as a way of educating their youth.
Ruling classes and religious communities, such as the British nobility
and various Christian denominations established boarding schools to give
their future leaderships a controlled generational form of training. In
Israel, the Labor Movement adopted this practice by founding
agricultural boarding schools and the National Religious Party
leadership did so by establishing high school yeshivas. In the case of
the Ethiopian Israeli youngsters, however, the almost universal extent
of referral to boarding schools, carried out at the state level, is
reminiscent of a different use of these institutions. Examples that come
to mind are those established by colonial regimes in Third World
countries to train a pro-colonial local elite and those that Native
American youngsters were forced to attend after the American army
defeated their nations (Adams, 1995). Closer to home, the referral of
Eth iopian Israeli youth to boarding schools brings to mind the referral
of Mizrahi (from Arab or North African countries) youth to boarding
schools in the 1960s, in order to train a Mizrahi elite in the spirit of
the values of the old-time state leadership, in the process cutting them
off from their parents' community.
Boarding school education has transformed the Ethiopian immigrant
parents into a "desert generation" whom the education system
disregards in its effort to assure the social "integration" of
the young generation. The disengagement between boarding schools and
parents first took shape at the time when many young people reached the

country without their parents. However, even when the boarding schools
began to enroll youngsters whose parents had immigrated with them,
problems arose: "Even with 'normative' families [those
with two parents--S. S.], it was difficult to maintain an educational
process due to difficulties of language, communication, travel, and
busing to school (loss of work days, large financial outlays under
conditions of hardship, and difficulties in familiarity with transport
arrangements to distant locations)" (Elbaum and Weinstein, 1997:
212).
By skipping over the "desert generation," the education
system sent Ethiopian Israeli youth a tacit message: they, and not their
parents, ranked at the forefront of Israel's community of Ethiopian
extraction. Indeed, most activists in organizations for Ethiopian
Israelis are young. This is another aspect of the disintegration of the
traditional community structure, on top of the other disintegrative
conditions that accompanied the move from Ethiopia to Israel. Eli Amir,
former head of Youth Aliyah, wrote about this in a memorandum to the
Director General of the Ministry of Education: "The sweeping
removal of children from their families sends the parents from Ethiopia
[the message] that they are unfit and incapable of caring for their
children .... This message sends the children [a message]: their parents
cannot take care of them and cannot be responsible for raising them.
Thus, it causes irreparable harm to the image of father, mother, and
family. In a broader sense, we are saying that we have despaired of
their parents and are taking their children away" (quoted from
Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews, 1995: 15).

The Israel Association for Ethiopian Jews commented, in this

context, that "Throughout the history of Israeli society, no
[other] community has experienced such a separation of so many of its
young people. The massive displacement of Ethiopian young people has
dealt the structure of the family in the community a severe blow, with
grave implications for the community's future" (Israel
Association for Ethiopian Jews, 1995: 14). Importantly, young Ethiopian
Israelis themselves take a dim view of the policy of referring them to
residential schools. In a follow-up study of Ethiopian Israeli
youngsters who attended high school in 1987--1989, conducted in
1995--1996, 71.5 percent of respondents expressed opposition to
enrolling their children in boarding schools (Well, 1997: 102). The
object of their disapproval was the very fact of attending boarding
schools, not the religious nature of most of the boarding schools that
Ethiopian Israeli pupils attended. Indeed, 55 percent expressed
willingness to enroll their chil dren in religious schools (ibid.: 105).
Ethiopian Israeli Pupils in the Education System
By the 1980s, when Ethiopian Jews began to immigrate to Israel,
there was already a strong correspondence between the level of education
provided by a school and the socia-economic level of residents of the
locality or neighborhood served by the school. As our chapter on housing
showed, most Ethiopian Israelis settled in poor neighborhoods and
localities and, accordingly, sent their children to schools that, for
the most part, were typified by a low scholastic level. Furthermore,
Ethiopian Israeli pupils integrated into an education system that had
become severely unequal. In the past two decades, school resources in

disadvantaged neighborhoods, development towns, and Arab localities have

been decreasing in relative terms, due to the erosion of education
budgets, on the one hand, and the spreading of "gray
education" on the other. Under "gray education," schools
in affluent neighborhoods build up their resources gradually by charging
co-payments, while schools where parents cannot afford this have to make
do with the Ministry of Education's eroding budgets. Consequently,
Ethiopian Israeli pupils found themselves in the same boat with large
groups of nonimmigrant Israeli youngsters whose relative status in the
education system was steadily losing ground.
In October 1999, a total of 14,523 students who had immigrated from
Ethiopia after January 1980 were enrolled in the education system -
6,322 in primary schools, 3,985 at the junior high level, and 4,122 in
senior high. Nearly three-fourths of them (71.4 percent) were in the
State Religious system (computed from Ministry of Education, 2000: 13 -
14; for CBS data for the 1998/99 school year, see CBS, 2001 [D 17).
According to November 2000 data, about two-thirds (65 percent) of pupils
of Ethiopian extraction were concentrated in six localities: Netanya,
Rehovot, Beersheva, Ashkelon, Hadera, and Ashdod (Ministry of Education,
2001: 10).
Primary Schooling
In February 1994, shortly after Operation Solomon, the Brookdale
Institute examined the preparations made by primary schools to receive
some 5,000 new pupils from Ethiopia (Lifschitz and Noam, 1995). The
study was conducted in forty-eight primary schools countrywide, in which
2,960 immigrants were enrolled, and focused on professionals:

principals, teachers, immigrant-absorption coordinators, counselors, and

psychologists. The inquiry showed that 75 percent of the new students
attended integrated classes (immigrants and nonimmigrants together) and
the rest attended classes made up of immigrants only. A large majority
of schools received the package of auxiliary resources that the Ministry
of Education had put together for Ethiopian pupils (see below). However,
youngsters in immigrant classes received less assistance than their
counterparts in integrated classes. Furthermore, only 10 percent of
teachers in integrated classes, compared to 50 percent of teachers in
immigrant classes, were aware of the existence of curricula that had
been tailored to the immigrant pupils' needs. About 60 percent of
immigrant pupils were in the lowest track in Hebrew and arithmetic.
A parallel survey among counselors and psychologists in these
schools (Kleiman and Lifschitz, 1995) found that no special preparations
had been made for the professionals who were to assist the immigrants.
Most counselors and psychologists devoted only a few hours a week to
counseling functions. Few respondents reported that their working hours
were increased so that they could devote more time to new immigrants
though the Ethiopian immigrant pupils were referred to counselors at a
higher rate than the student body at large. The interviewees reported
that they felt they needed additional guidance and in-service training
so that they would be able to diagnose the pupils' problems more
effectively.
Secondary Schooling
In 1997, the Brookdale Institute conducted a comprehensive survey
of Ethiopian Israeli youngsters studying in high schools. The survey was

based on a sample of 850 students (out of 10,200 in the 12 - 18 age

group), 360 students' mothers, thirty-one principals, and some
1,300 teachers (Lifschitz, Noam, and Habib, 1998).
The researchers found that many young people in the sample had
graduated from Israeli primary schools with low scholastic levels and
that quite a few of them had entered junior high with poorer scholastic
achievements than those of their classmates (ibid.: 17). In post-primary
schools, some youngsters were referred to vocational programs and tracks
(ibid.: 17). Teaching staff lacked the tools to cope with the Ethiopian
Israeli pupils' unique difficulties, and parents could hardly help
their children (ibid.: 17). A large majority of youngsters reported
having difficulties in English. Of the 60 percent of students who
reported that their schools had tracking in English and mathematics, 65
percent stated that they were in low tracks in English and 75 percent in
low tracks in mathematics (ibid.: 26). A generalized discussion of
Ethiopian Israeli pupils' achievements may give the impression of
across-the-board failure. In fact, there is considerable variance within
the group. Many do very well; when asked to rate their Ethiopian Israeli
students, teachers ranked 27 percent as successful in mathematics and 32
percent as successful in Hebrew, with "success" defined as
grades of 80 or more. In the teachers' opinions, these
students' scholastic integration has gone very well (ibid., 89).
However, the teachers also singled out a large group of failures: 32
percent in mathematics and 19 percent in Hebrew. Simple arithmetic shows
that the percent of successful students in Hebrew far surpassed the
percent of failures.

The authors of the study noted several changes in the educational

policy concerning Ethiopian Israeli students: (1) enrollment in
neighborhood schools had become more frequent, instead of almost
"automatic" referral to boarding schools (ibid.: 1); (2) more
youngsters, when referred to boarding schools, were placed in schools
with higher scholastic level offering matriculation programs (ibid.: 1).
The researchers found a higher proportion of students preparing for
matriculation exams that would qualify them for a matriculation
certificate (a prerequisite for college study) among boarding school
students than among those in neighborhood schools (ibid.: 21).
Passing Matriculation Exams
At the high-school level, there is a recognized indicator of
achievement: the proportion of students who pass the matriculation exams
and obtain matriculation certificates. There are other indicators as
well, including the proportion of twelfth grade students who pass the
matriculation exams, the number of students enrolled in the twelfth
grade, and the proportion of twelfth graders who take the exams.
Data from the Central Bureau of Statistics for the 1998/99 school
year show the following: 70.2 percent of 1,435 Ethiopian-born
twelfth-graders that year took the matriculation exams and 42.2 percent
of those who took the exams passed. Thus, 29.6 percent of the
twelfth-graders--425 students --obtained matriculation certificates
(CBS, 2001 [D]: 18). The Ministry of Education furnished us with almost
identical data. (See Table 18 below.) Notably, 52 percent of
twelfth-graders born in Israel and 56.9 percent of those born in the
former Soviet Union obtained matriculation certificates that year

(ibid.: 18).
The highest rate of Ethiopian-born twelfth-graders in preparatory
courses for matriculation was found in the academic track, where 95
percent sat for the exams. In the vocational track, only 41.8 percent of
twelfth-graders took the exams. However, both groups had similar passing
rates: 41.8 percent and 41.5 percent, respectively (ibid.: Table 17).
Among twelfth-graders in the agriculture track, 92.2 percent took the
examinations but only 37.3 percent passed (ibid.). The State Religious
schools that most Ethiopian-born pupils attend seem to have a better
record, generally speaking, than the State schools in which a minority
of Ethiopian Israelis is enrolled. Among 705 twelfth-graders of
Ethiopian extraction in the State Religious system in 1998/99, 71
percent took the matriculation examinations and 49 percent of them
passed. In contrast, only 58 percent of 250 twelfth-graders in the State
system took the tests and only 16 percent of them passed (ibid.: Table
21). Thus, 91 percent of Ethiopian Israelis who obta ined matriculation
certificates at the end of twelfth grade came from the State Religious
system and, in particular, from this system's boarding schools.
These figures seem consistent with the foregoing general description of
the quality of schools in most neighborhoods where Israeli Ethiopians
have settled.
Ethiopian Israelis' achievements have been rising over the
past decade. Based on data produced by the Ministry of Education, a
Brookdale Institute research team reported an increase in the number of
students attending schools that prepare students for the matriculation
exams: from 480 in 1993 to 1,454 in 1997 (Lifschitz, Noam, and Habib,

1998: 29). Data prepared for the Adva Center by the Ministry of
Education for the 1995 - 2000 period point to a steady long-term
increase in the number of students obtaining matriculation certificates:
from 159 in 1995 to 294 in 1997 and more than 400 in each subsequent
year (see table below). The percentage of twelfth-graders who passed the
exams climbed from 20 - 23 percent in 1996 and 1997 to 31 -32 percent in
1999 and 2000.
The most meaningful statistic is neither the proportion of
twelfth-graders passing the matriculation exams nor the proportion of
twelfth-graders taking the exams, but rather the proportion of those who
pass the exams out of the total number of seventeen year-olds. This is
because many teenagers drop out before twelfth grade. Unfortunately,
there are no figures available on how many seventeen-year-old Ethiopian
Israelis there were in each of the years shown in Table 18.
Another important aspect to consider in studying the matriculation
data is the quality of the certificate earned. At least some Ethiopian
Israelis, it seems, earn poor-quality certificates that lessen their
prospects of admission to institutes of higher learning. The Brookdale
Institute's comprehensive survey showed that in all schools that
prepared students to take the mathematics exam, the level of study was
three units (just enough to meet the minimum requirement of higher
education institutes). Only two pupils in two schools took the test at
the highest (five-unit) level (Lifschitz, Noam, and Habib, 1998: 100).
The authors of the survey report noted that "Whereas a large share
of these young people (65%) is enrolled in programs of study that lead
to matriculation certificates, about onethird of eleventh - and

twelfth-graders (35 percent) report that they are to be tested on fewer

than twenty-one units, i.e., fewer than the number necessary for a full
matriculation certificate" (ibid.: 176). The authors ad ded,
"In view of the current patterns of enrollment in tracks leading to
full matriculation, no meaningful improvement in the proportion of youth
of Ethiopian extraction passing the matriculation exams should be
expected. Importantly, the main obstacle is not the program of study in
which they are enrolled but the actual number of units on which they are
to be tested" (ibid.: 194).
The Ministry of Education's Assistance Policy
In the 1960s and 1970s, the education system developed two main
ways of tackling personal or group differences in scholastic
achievements. One is tracking, which separates pupils who meet normative
requirements from those who do not at an early phase, the primary level.
The pupils who are not up to par are placed in low tracks in primary and
junior high school. At the senior high level, they are enrolled in
vocational schools or classes that teach matriculation subjects at a low
achievement level. The second method is a set of assistance programs for
youngsters defined as "disadvantaged." For years, this
assistance was based on an ethnic key: a youngster was diagnosed as
"disadvantaged" if his/her father was born in Asia or Africa,
had many children, and had few years of schooling. In 1994, the
definition was revised to reflect a socioeconomic basis and a new index
was developed for this purpose.
The main form of assistance for the disadvantaged is an allotment
of extra teaching hours for schools attended by pupils defined as

disadvantaged. The Ministry of Education has also developed assistance

programs that target the disadvantaged directly, including enrichment
for preschool and primary school, preparation for matriculation exams,
etc.
As we have seen, most Ethiopian students found themselves in
schools that have long served pupils who are routinely defined as
"disadvantaged." For this reason, the Ethiopian Israeli
youngsters fit "naturally" into existing bureaucratic
categories and, consequently, were offered the usual assistance plans.
As the Brookdale Institute researchers noted, "As a rule, services
for adolescents of Ethiopian origin are delivered by existing entities
and new entities were not developed for this purpose" (Lifschitz,
Noam, and Segal, 1997: 4). The education system neither developed new
ways of helping Ethiopian Israelis nor even saw fit to examine the
efficacy of the methods that had been in use since the 1960s and the
1970s. This happened even though it was quite obvious by the time the
Ethiopian immigrants arrived that these methods were not narrowing the
achievement gaps that had developed between pupils in affluent
neighborhoods and their counterparts in poor neighborhoods, development
towns, and Arab localities.
In addition to general assistance for the
"disadvantaged," from which all students at schools attended
by Ethiopian Israelis benefit, the schools get an extra allotment of
teaching hours. The basis for this increment is the designation of a
pupil as an "immigrant." Ordinarily, the Ministry of Education
defines newcomers as immigrants for four years, starting from the

September first after their immigration. However, the term of

eligibility was extended for Ethiopian Israelis who came in Operation
Solomon (1991). Ministry of Education data for 2000 show that some 80
percent of immigrants from Ethiopia were eligible for the extra quota
(Ministry of Education, 2000: 13). The Brookdale Institute's
comprehensive survey (1997) found that these immigrant pupils were
continuing to benefit from this definition as of the writing of the
survey report (Lifschitz, Noam, and Segal, 1997: 4).
A school attended by an Ethiopian immigrant is eligible for 1.75
extra weekly teaching hours on his/her account. An immigrant teenager in
eleventh or twelfth grade who takes three matriculation exams or more
entitles his/her school to one additional weekly teaching hour. These
extra teaching hours are credited to the school directly and are used at
the principal's discretion (ibid.: 4). The principal may choose
among six models: (1) teaching a group of immigrants or an individual
immigrant outside of the main class setting; (2) bringing an additional
teacher into the classroom; (3) providing an immigrant or a group of
immigrants with after-school remedial activities; (4) establishing a
separate class ("absorption class") in all or some subjects;
(5) pooling all the extra hours and allocating them in accordance with
the needs of an individual or a small group; and (6) allocating teaching
hours for tracking, in which nonimmigrant students also take part
(Ministry of Education, 2001: 15).
The allotment of extra hours is significant, especially for schools
that have a large Ethiopian Israeli student population. Still, it cannot
enable such schools to catch up with affluent schools of long standing.

As we have shown, most schools attended by Ethiopian Israelis are poor

in resources; the targeted aid they receive for taking in Ethiopian
Israelis does not suffice to make major changes.
The Ministry of Education also covers a portion of schools'
expenses for textbooks, outings, school supplies, etc., for pupils who
immigrated in the past three years. By so doing, the Ministry assumes a
burden that parents normally cover as part of their compulsory
co-payment. In 2001, the Ministry's remittance for immigrants,
known in the jargon as the "absorption benefits package," was
MS 626 per pupil at the primary level, NIS 907 per pupil in junior high,
and MS 1,125 per high school student (for those who immigrated between
September 1999 and August 2000) (Ministry of Education, 2001: 16).
Ethiopian Israeli pupils are placed in various programs that
schools in low-income areas offer as a matter of course. Examples are
after-hours care in family settings or in school, HORIM (enrichment and
nurturing for parents of children from preschool age up); MENA (an
anti-dropout program), and OMETZ (development of self-confidence,
perseverance, and expectation of achievements), for junior-high
graduates whose grades fall short of the requirements of high schools
that prepare students for the matriculation exams. Ethiopian Israeli
students also participate in assistance programs that aim to enhance
their prospects of passing the matriculation exams: MABAR, which readies
pupils for matriculation by facilitating study in small classes and
imparting scholastic skills; "Second Chance," geared for those
who passed only some matriculation exams; and MICHAEL, which teaches
scholastic skills of use in preparing for the exams (Lifschitz, Noam,

and Segal, 1997: 5 - 6).

Finally, the Ministry of Education gives students from Ethiopia,
like immigrants from other countries, special dispensations on the exams
themselves: (1) the right to take some exams orally, (2) the option of
being tested in several subjects according to a special school-level
syllabus for immigrants (upon approval of the inspector) or an external
syllabus, and (3) the right to an extra ten points plus additional time
to complete the standard exam. Ethiopian immigrant students may also be
tested on their native language as though it were their first foreign
language and may use a dictionary (Lifschitz, Noam, and Segal, 1997: 5).
In January 2000, a committee chaired by Dr. Gad Avikasis, Senior
Deputy Director General for Administration and Human Resources at the
Ministry of Education, submitted a report about the special programs for
Ethiopian Israeli pupils (Ministry of Education, 2000). The committee
recommended several changes in the implementation of these programs and
a long-term budget increase for several additional programs, the most
expensive of which concerned dropout prevention, preparation for higher
studies, and a set of assistance activities. The total budget that the
committee recommended for these programs was NIS 31.75 million. To view
this sum - a long-term increment, as noted - in proportion, one need
only note that it is equivalent to the extra budget (i.e., that
exceeding the Ministry's regular allocation) that just one
prestigious high school - Herzliya Gymnasium in Tel Aviv - raises each
year (Ha'aretz, May 9, 2001).
Over-referral to Special Education
It seems that an especially large number of Ethiopian Israeli

youngsters are referred to special education, either in separate schools

or in separate classes in regular schools. Special education is meant
for "a person of three to twenty-one years of age who, due to
faulty development of physical, intellectual, psychological, or
behavioral fitness, is limited in his/her ability to adjust and requires
special education" (Special Education Act, 5748-1988). Although
this definition leaves no doubt that special education is for
exceptional cases only, referrals of ordinary children, mostly from
minority or socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, have been known to
occur due to misdiagnosis or misinterpretation of the letter and spirit
of the law. In many cases, referral to special education is used,
improperly, to cope with children who have adjustment difficulties
stemming from class or ethnic factors. For years, over-referral to
special education has been a typical feature of schools in poor urban
neighborhoods and development towns.
The published statistics on Ethiopian Israeli pupils in special
education show large discrepancies. For example, figures for the 1997/98
school year ranged from 472 pupils to 852. Assuming that most referrals
to special education occur at the primary level, and assuming that there
were approximate 6,000 Ethiopian Israelis in primary schools in 1997/98,
we calculate the rate of referral at a high proportion--8 - 14 percent.
In May 2000, the Network for the Advancement of Education of Ethiopian
Israelis presented detailed documentation on errors in diagnosis and
placement to a committee that examined the implementation of the Special
Education Act, chaired by Professor Malka Margalit (Network for the
Advancement of Education of Ethiopian Israelis, 2000).

How Many Ethiopian Israelis Are in "Special Ed"?

In the course of one school year, 1997/98, several agencies
released a variety of figures about the number of Ethiopian Israelis in
special education:
The State Comptroller's Report for 1998 found 852 - 461 in
special-education schools and the rest in special-education classes in
regular schools.
Ruth Penn, director of the Special Education Division, reported 613
(letter to the Public Committee on Quality Education (HILA), December
15, 1997).
Dr. Gad Avikasis, Senior Deputy Director General for Administration
and Human Resources at the Ministry of Education, placed the figure at
472 (letter to Network for the Advancement of Education of Ethiopian
Israelis, May 21, 1998).
The director of the Computer Administration at the Ministry of
Education spoke of 588 (letter from Yigal Duchan to Dr. Gad Avikasis,
October 14, 1998 - Network for the Advancement of Education of Ethiopian
Israelis, 2000).
High Dropout Rates
The disengagement of boarding school pupils from their families,
the general lack of communication between Ethiopian Israeli parents and
school teachers and administrations, and the use of tracking-have led to
a sense of low expectations-and to high dropout rates among Ethiopian
Israeli students (ELEM, 1994). The Brookdale Institute's
comprehensive survey (1997) found that 6 percent of Ethiopian Israelis
aged 14-17--9 percent of boys and 4 percent of girls--had dropped out of

school, twice the dropout rate of the Jewish population at large

(Lifschitz, Noam, and Habib, 1998: 55). A Ministry of Education report
prepared by Dr. Gad Avikasis' committee reported that 798 of 14,523
Ethiopian Israeli pupils in the education system dropped out in 1999,
mostly from boarding schools. The dropouts comprised 5.5 percent of the
Ethiopian Israeli pupil population (Ministry of Education, January 2000:
56).
The CBS has released statistics on dropouts from grades 9-11 who
immigrated to Israel in 1990 1995 and 1996-1999. For students who
immigrated in the earlier period, the dropout rate in grades 9-11 was
5.4 percent, a level almost identical to that cited by the Avikasis
Committee and only slightly lower than that found in the Brookdale
Institute survey. Notably, this rate was lower than that of dropouts
from the former Soviet Union-7.6 percent (CBS, 2001 [B]: Table 9). In
contrast, the dropout rate among youngsters who reached Israel between
1996 and 1999 was 16.5 percent, and the rate for ninth-grade pupils was
especially high, at 26.6 percent (ibid.).
Higher Education
Over the past decade, more and more Ethiopian Israelis have been
attending accredited institutions of higher learning. According to the
Association for the Advancement of Education, which runs pre-academic
preparatory programs, one reason for the increase was a decision by the
"immigrant absorption cabinet" in 1992 to grant Ethiopian
Israelis government assistance for 5-6 years of study after compulsory
schooling (Association for the Advancement of Education, memorandum,
January 23, 2002). The decision, the initiative of the ministers of

Immigrant Absorption and Education at the time, Yair Tsaban and Amnon
Rubinstein, may be viewed as a higher education counterpart to the
decision to give Ethiopian immigrant households generous mortgages for
home purchase. Following the decision, several academic institutions set
up special preparatory programs for Ethiopian Israelis, pre-academic
programs relaxed their admissions criteria, and large financial
subsidies were awarded: full tuition for five or six years; a mont hly
stipend; rent subsidy; funding for tutoring, psychometric courses, and
textbooks (ibid.). Most Ethiopian Israelis do not go directly from high
school to college. As noted above, many earn matriculation certificates
that do not meet the admissions criteria of Israeli universities.
Accordingly, those who wish to attend such institutions must improve
their scores and/or make up scores that their certificates lack. Most
students of Ethiopian extraction in Israel embark on academic studies
only after taking a pre-academic program (see Lifschitz and Noam, 1996:
18).
The Association for the Advancement of Education offers two main
types of preparatory programs: programs affiliated with universities,
which prepare students for higher education and award the equivalent of
a matriculation certificate for the purpose of university admission, and
programs run by accredited and teachers' colleges, which are longer
in duration and amount to "pre-preparatory" settings (CBS,
1998: 9). In 1998, more than 11,000 students were enrolled in some forty
preparatory programs (ibid.).
The following table shows the number of Ethiopian Israeli students
in preparatory programs-those run by the Association for the Advancement

of Education, including those affiliated with universities. By comparing

the data in the table with data on first-year university students (see
below), we find that most Ethiopian Israelis who take pre-academic
programs do advance to university studies.
The next two tables refer to the population of Ethiopian Israelis
who attend universities and accredited colleges. The data concerning
universities are for 1994 and 1999; those on accredited colleges pertain
to 1996 and 1999.
As the tables show, the number of first-year university students
doubled between 1994 and 1999 from 82 to 176.
In 1994, only one university-Haifa-had a relatively large number of
students of Ethiopian extraction. By 1999, it had been joined by
Bar-Ilan University and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. In both
years, few Ethiopian Israelis attended at the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University. In both years, over 80 percent of
students were majoring in the humanities or the social sciences. In
1999, the proportion of other population groups in these two majors were
55.7 percent of total Israeli students; 55.5 percent of Jewish students;
and 59.3 percent of "students of other religions," most of
whom are Arab. In their large concentration in social sciences and
humanities, Ethiopian Israelis are more like Mizrahi students (65.2
percent) than Ashkenazi students (51.1 percent). The group most similar
to the Ethiopians in terms of concentration in these two fields are the
Druze, 75.6 percent of whom study humanities or social science (all data
from CBS, 2001 [C]: Table 21). The table also shows that the n umber of
doctoral students doubled during the 1994-1999 period. Since the number

of masters' students is negligible and did not increase over that

period, the doctoral candidates evidently obtained their masters'
degrees in Ethiopia or, in any case, outside of Israel.
Ethiopian Israeli enrollment in accredited colleges has increased
perceptibly, but it should be borne in mind that these colleges did not
become a meaningful option for young people in Israel until the late
1990s. In 1999, fifty-nine Ethiopian Israelis attended accredited
colleges, thirty-three of them as first-year students. Most of them were
majoring in technological sciences; a smaller group was studying social
sciences.
Possible Alternatives
As noted, the high school achievements and university admission
rates of Ethiopian Israelis have improved significantly in recent years.
However, the formal achievements of a large proportion of young people
remain poor. The Ministry of Education continues to administer most of
its assistance in routine ways, despite its own repeated statements
about the unique approach that this group of youngsters needs.
Thus, it is worth discussing possible new patterns of action. Below
we consider two alternatives: a government investment in upgrading the
schools that Ethiopian Israeli pupils attend, and the creation of elite
programs of study for these pupils, along the lines of institutions that
were established for former Soviet immigrants or quality programs for
specific student populations, such as the ultraorthodox high-level
yeshivas and Christian boarding schools.
These are not the only two options; we focus on them because they
represent the sorts of options that are not ordinarily considered.

Upgrading of Regular Schools Attended by Ethiopian Israelis

As stated, most Ethiopian Israelis live in development towns and
low-income urban neighborhoods, whose education systems are
characterized by low achievements. In seven of ten localities that had
Ethiopian Israeli populations in excess of 2,000 in 1995 - Ashkelon,
Beersheva, Ashdod, Afula, Ramle, Kiryat Malakhi, and Kiryat Gat - the
general rate of success in the matriculation exams was lower than the
national average. In the remaining localities Hadera, Netanya, and Haifa
- the success rate was higher but probably did not include Ethiopian
Israeli youngsters, who lived in poor neighborhoods and attended
inferior schools. Under these circumstances, the best way to improve the
achievements of Ethiopian Israeli pupils is not to add special teaching
hours, which cannot change the general ranking of the school, but rather
to invest massively in raising the general level of the whole school.
Then, Ethiopian Israeli pupils would benefit from a high-level
educational institution, together with the rest of the local
schoolchildren.
As we know, the Ministry of Education stopped investing in the
enhancement of schools in peripheral areas long ago. Over the past two
decades, huge disparities have developed in the resources of different
schools. The Ministry of Education's allocation policy is doing
nothing to narrow them. The ministry allows actually encourages -
schools to raise money independently by soliciting donations, raising
parents' fees, and/or allowing commercial use of school premises
and services. The main beneficiaries of this policy are schools that
serve affluent neighborhoods in major cities. When it comes to pupils

and schools of meager means, the ministry confines its assistance mainly
to an assortment of enhancement programs, which have long offered
nothing that could counterbalance the private funds currently pouring
into the affluent schools.
The only way that these schools will catch up with those in
prosperous neighborhoods is with the help of a massive injection of
state funds. Only then would Ethiopian Israeli children have an
opportunity to study at a level equal to that of pupils from affluent
families.
Establishment of Model Schools for Ethiopian Israelis
The second option is to turn what is currently perceived as a
handicap into an advantage-to transform schools that are attended by an
Ethiopian Israeli majority into high quality institutions such as those
in affluent neighborhoods. This can be done by attracting teaching
staff, within the community and outside it, who would consider the
project a national challenge. Such schools could raise the threshold of
expectations of all schoolchildren in the Ethiopian Israeli community
and, indirectly, for all pupils in Israel. They could also provide a
setting for the training of a future leadership under conditions of
generous schooling resources. This idea may evoke opposition among
Ethiopian Israelis and education policymakers alike. The opponents may
argue that such a measure may impede integration and aggravate the
tendency to separatism and fractiousness in Israeli society. It deserves
consideration, however, as one way to promote young members of the
Ethiopian community in Israel. Ethiopian-majority schools wo uld not be
a novelty in the Israeli education system, which has separate schools

for Arabs, for the ultraorthodox (and, within this community, separate
schools for boys and girls); there are even a few special institutions
for youngsters from the former Soviet Union. Furthermore, several
boarding and neighborhood schools already have a majority of Ethiopian
extraction.
Thus, the novelty would be not in having a concentration of
Ethiopian Israeli students but in the state's willingness to invest
human and financial resources in such schools on a scale currently found
in affluent neighborhoods only.
The National Project
At the present writing (December 2001), a program called the
"National Project" is being discussed. Its architects include
Diaspora communities, the Jewish Agency for Israel, and the Government
of Israel. Its goal is "to bring about the social integration of
Ethiopian immigrants so that they integrate into all sectors and fields
of Israeli life, like all other citizens of Israel" (Dolev, Fogel
& Co., 2000 [A]: 7). The project is to be budgeted at MS 660 million
over ten years, half from Diaspora organizations and the rest from the
Israel state budget. Former.Prime Minister Ehud Barak welcomed the
initiative and promised, on behalf of the government, to provide its
share of the funding (Barak to Charles Bronfman, January 11, 2001).
A statement of principles for the "National Project,"
prepared for the sponsors by the Dolev, Fogel & Co. consulting firm,
proposed three alternative paths of action: investment in selected
fields-including family and community, employment and education, and
selected localities-or investment in a selected age group, the young.

Education plays a central role in each alternative. For example,

investment in the young entails an investment in programs such as those
that prepare students for matriculation, encourage students not to drop
out, train teachers, train students for the transitions to junior high
and senior high, prepare students for higher education, and so on.
A review of the aforementioned programs reveals that most of the
"National Project" proposals merely reinforce existing
programs and activities, run by the central government and by municipal
authorities. Thus, the donations to be collected will augment funding
that comes from the state budget. In other words, the "National
Project" will not offer the Ethiopian Israeli community innovative
and creative activities; instead, it will simply help to fund routine
government programs. As for the government's co-funding, it should
be noted that the statement of principles expects the government to fund
only some of the increase that it pledged to the "National
Project"; the current allocations of various government offices for
Ethiopian Israelis will be considered part of the co-payment (Dolev,
Fogel & Co., 2000 [A]: 10).
It appears that the ability of the "National Project" to
make an impact is limited from the very outset. Its annual budget, apart
from being quite small, will be diverted in small amounts to a large
number of activities that various state authorities offer routinely in
any case. It might have been worth devising a different format for the
project, i.e., massive investment in a narrowly defined, innovative
program such as the establishment of model schools in several
neighborhoods where many Ethiopian Israelis have settled.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

Table 1

Permanent Housing for Ethiopian Immigrants - Proposed Localities

Socioeconomic ranking of locality

"Average Unclassified
and small
"Below average" "Average" above" localities

Acre Afula Bat Yam Atlit

Ashdod Arad Eilat Givat Shemuel
Ashkelon Beersheva Hadera Kefar Yona
Bene Berak Gedera Herzliyya Ma'ale Adummim
Migdal ha-Emek Karmiel Hod Hasharon Mazkeret Batya
Lod Holon Katzrin
Or Yehuda Nesher Kefar Sava Kiryat Arba
Kiryat Gat Netanya Nahariyya Kiryat Ekron
Kiryat Malakhi Pardes Hannah Ness Ziyyona Sederot
Ramle Kiryat Ata Petah Tikva
Safed Kiryat Bialik
Tiberias Kiryat Yam Kiryat Motzkin
Tirat Hakarmel Upper Nazareth Kiryat Ono
Yavne Kiryat Tivon

Ra'ananna
Rehovot
Rishon Leziyyon
Yehud

Ministry of Immigrant Absorption, Absorption of Ethiopian Immigrants:

Master Plan, 1985: 46-52.
Table 2

Locations with Relatively Large Populations of Ethiopian Extraction,

1999

Locality Population of
Ethiopian Extraction

Netanya 5,900
Rehovot 5,000
Hadera 4,200
Beersheva 4,154 (1998)
Ashkelon 4,100
Haifa 3,938 (1998)
Ashdod 3,900
Afula 2,700
Kiryat Gat 2,600
Kiryat Malakhi 2,300
Yavne 1,800

Lad 1,500
Kiryat Yam 1,400
Pardes Hannah-Karkur 1,180 (1998)

1999 data - CBS, 2001, memorandum, "Population of Ethiopian Extractin,

by Localities"; 1998 data - Dolev, Fogel & Co., Absorption of Ethiopian
Immigrants: Proposal for National Project, Status Report at Locality
Level, April 2000
Table 3

Main Localities where Ethiopian Israelis Reside in Public Housing, 2001

Locality Number of Number of Total

Amidar Amigur dwellings
dwellings dwellings

Ofakim 140 140

Ashdod 245 245
Beersheva 326 326
Bat Yam 92 92
Hadera 122 122
Migdal ha-Emek 81 81
Netanya 333 333
Afula 234 234
Petah Tikva 83 83
Safed 72 72

Kiryat Gat 165 165

Kiryat Yam 136 136
Rishon Lezion 183 183
Rehovot 96 321
Ramle 127 493
Sederot/Netivot 187 187
Tel Aviv-Yafo 2 81 83
Other 477 381 858
Total 2,312 1,251 3,563

The Amigur figures include hostels and homes for the elderly.

Sources: "Results of Inquiry, by Locality," memorandum from Amidar,

July 5, 2001; memorandum from Amigur, July 22, 2001.
Table 4

Home Purchases Facilitated by Special Mortgages, by Locality, 1993 -

2001 (June)

Locality Number of homes

purchased

Rehovot 975
Netanya 966
Hadera 581
Lod 509

Kiryat Malakhi 386

Haifa 373
Ramle 338
Jerusalem 248
Rishon Lezion 269
Yavne 231
Pardes Hannah-Karkur 172
Petah Tikva 154
Kiryat Yam 132
Kiryat Motzkin 103
Other localities 2,977

Total 8,414

Ministry of Construction and Housing, Tenanting Division, "Takeup of

Mortgages by Immigrants from Ethiopia, by Locality," memorandum, July
2001.
Table 5

Ethiopian Israelis Aged 25--54, by Labor Force Participation Rate and

Sex, 1999

Men
Total 25-34 35-44 4-54 Total

Total 6,916 3,774 1,925 1,217 7,862

In Labor Force 4,878 2,780 1,177 921 2,953

Not in Labor Force 2,038 994 748 296 4,909
Participation rate 71% 74% 61% 76% 38%

Women
25-34 35-44 45-54

Total 4,213 2,059 1,590

In Labor Force 1,946 720 287
Not in Labor Force 2,267 1,339 1,303
Participation rate 46% 35% 18%

Source: Adva Center analysis of Central Bureau of statistics, Labor

Force Survey 1999, Demographic File.
Table 6

Civilian Labor Force Participation, Ethiopian Israelis Aged 25-54, by

Period of Immigration, 1999

Total 1980s 1990s

immigrants immigrants

Total 14,777 7,976 6,801

In Labor Force 7,830 4,821 3,009
Percent 53% 60% 44%
Not in Labor Force 6,947 3,155 3,792

Percent 47% 40% 56%

Adva Center analysis of Central Bureau of Statistics, Labor Force Survey

1999, Demographic File.
Table 7

Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate, Ethiopian Israelis Aged 25-54,

by Period of Immigration and Age Group, 1999

1980s immigrants 1990s immigrants

25-34 35-44 45-54 25-34 35-44

In Labor Force 65% 53% 59% 52% 43%

Not in Labor Force 35% 47% 41% 48% 57%

1990s
immigrants
45-54

In Labor Force 23%

Not in Labor Force 77%

Adva Center analysis of Central Bureau of Statistics, Labor Force

Surveys 1999, Demographic File.
Table 8

Ethiopian Israelis Aged 25 - 54 Who do not Participate in the Civilian

Labor Force, by Various Characteristics, 1999

Characteristics Percentage of
respective
population on
each line

Sex Men 29%

Women 62%
Immigration 1980s 40%
1990s 56%
Schooling None or some
but without any
diploma/certificate 66%
Completed primary
school or junior
high school 35%
Graduated from
academic high school 26%
Graduated from
vocational high school 29%
Bachelor's or
advanced degree 36%

Adva Center analysis of Central Bureau of Statistics, Labor Force

Surveys 1999, Demographic File.

Table 9

Employed Ethiopian Israelis Aged 25-54, by Economic Field, 1999

Economic Field Persons Percent

employed

Manufacturing 2,576 39%

Public services 1,839 28%
Trade,
Accommodation
services and
restaurants 795 12%
Banking and
Business activities 514 8%
Other fields 813 12%
Not known 97 1%
Total 6,634 100%

Note: "Other fields" include agriculture, electricity and water,

construction, transport, storage and communication, domestic services,
and extraterritorial organizations and bodies.

Source: Adva Center analysis of CBS, Labor Force Surveys 1999,

Demographic File.

Table 10

Employed Ethiopian Israelis Aged 25 - 54, by Economic Field and Period

of Immigration, 1999

1980s immigrants 1990s

immigrants
25-34 35-44 45-54 25-34

Manufacturing 39% 42% 42% 43%

Trade, Accommodation
services and restaurants 8% 13% 18% 12%
Banking and
Business activities 2% 8% 6% 14%
Public services 44% 32% 17% 6%
Other fields 6% - 17% 25%
Not known 2% 5% - -
Total 100% 100% 100% 100%

1990s immigrants
35-44 45-54

Manufacturing 24% 46%

Trade, Accommodation
services and restaurants 15% 16%
Banking and

Business activities 18% -

Public services 26% 16%
Other fields 17% 22%
Not known - -
Total 100% 100%

Note: "Other fields" include agriculture, electricity and water,

construction, transportation, storage and communication, domestic
services, and extraterritorial organizations and bodies.

Source: Adva Center analysis of Central Bureau of Statistics, Labor

Force Surveys 1999, Demographic File.
Table 11

Employed Ethiopian Israelis Aged 25-54, by Economic Field and Gender,

1999

Men Women
25-34 35-44 45-54 25-34

Manufacturing 49% 44% 45% 26%

Trade, Accommodation
services and restaurants 7% 15% 10% 13%
Banking and
business activities 8% 14% -- 4%
Public services 19% 12% 22% 47%

Other fields 15% 11% 23% 10%

Total 2,268 1,102 856 1,497

Women
35-44 45-54

Manufacturing 17% 34%

Trade, Accommodation
services and restaurants 12% 45%
Banking and
business activities 10% 21%
Public services 58% --
Other fields 2% --

Total 677 234

Note: (1.)The total does not add up to 100% due to the proportion of
"Unknowns."

(2.)"Other fields" include agriculture, electricity and water,

construction, transportation, storage and communication, domestic
services, and extraterritorial organizations and bodies.

Source: Adva Center analysis of Central Bureau of Statistics, Labor

Force Surveys 1999, Demographic File.

Table 12

Employed Ethiopian Israelis Aged 25 - 54, by Occupation and Sex, 1999

Percent of Age Group

Men Women
25-34 35-44 45-54 25-34

Academic -- -- 6% 2%
Liberal and technical 2% 8% -- 15%
Clerical 6% -- 13% 15%
Agents, sales, services 20% 12% -- 15%
Agriculture 2% 12% 9% --
Manufacturing 47% 38% 37% 10%
Unskilled 23% 30% 35% 44%

Total 2,154 1,055 856 1,496

Women
35-44 45-54

Academic -- --
Liberal and technical 14% --
Clerical -- --
Agents, sales, services 19% --

Agriculture -- --
Manufacturing -- --
Unskilled 66% 100%

Total 678 234

Note: "Other fields" include agriculture, electricity and water,

construction, transportation, storage and communication, domestic
services, and extraterritorial organizations and bodies.

Source: Adva Center analysis of Central Bureau of Statistics, Labor

Force Surveys 1999, Demographic File.
Table 13

Emploued Ethiopian Israelis Aged 25 - 54, by Economic Field and

Occupation, 1999

Percent in Economic Field

Liberal/
Total (N) Academic technical Clerical

Manufacturing 2,503 - - 6%
Trade, Accommodation services
and restaurants 794 - - 18%

Banking and business

activities 514 - - -
Public services 18% 5% 24% 10%
Other fields 813 - - -
Unknown 8 - - -

Agents, Skilled Skilled

sales, and farm manufacturing
services workers workers

Manufacturing 2% - 60%
Trade, Accommodation services
and restaurants 21% - 9%
Banking and business
activities 20% - -
Public services 31% - 1%
Other fields - 30% 34%
Unknown - - 100%

Unskilled
workers

Manufacturing 32%
Trade, Accommodation services
and restaurants 52%

Banking and business

activities 80%
Public services 29%
Other fields 36%
Unknown -

Note: "Other fields" include agriculture, electricity and water,

construction, transportation, storage and communication, domestic
services, and extraterritorial organizations and bodies.

Source: Adva Center analysis of Central Bureau of Statistics, Labor

Force Surveys 1999, Demographic File.
Table 14

Employed Ethiopian Israelis Aged 25 - 54, by Economic Field

and Occupation and by Gender - Selected Economic Fields, 1999

Percent of Gender Group

Agents,
sales,
Liberal/ and
Total (N) Academic technical Clerical services

Manufacturing 2,503 - - - -
Men 1,912 - - 7% -

Women 591 - - - 10%

Banking and business

activities 514 - - - -
Men 333 - - - 32%
Women 181 - - - -

Public Services 1,840 - - - -

Men 742 7% 17% 6% 49%
Women 1,098 3% 29% 12% 19%

Skilled Skilled
farm manufacturing Unskilled
workers workers workers

Manufacturing - - -
Men - 72% 20%
Women - 21% 69%

Banking and business

activities - - -
Men - - 68%
Women - - 100%

Public Services - - -

Men - 3% 18%
Women - - 37%

Source: Adva Center analysis of Central Bureau of Statistics, Labor

Force Surveys 1999, Demographic File.
Table 15

Unemployed Ethipian Israelis Aged 25 - 54, by Various Characteristics,

1999

Category Percent of
total on each
line

General All persons aged 25 - 24 15%

in civilian labor force
Sex Men 13%
Women 18%
Time of immigration 1980s 13%
1990s 19%
Schooling None or no diploma/ 8%
certificate
Completed primary and/or 22%
junior high school
Graduated from academic 21%
high school

Graduated from vocational 16%

high school
Attended institution of 24%
higher learning

Adva Center analysis of Central Bureau of Statistics, Labor Force

Surveys 1999, Demographic File.
Table 16

Employed Ethiopian Israelis Aged 25 - 54, by Education and Occupation,

1999

No Primary/ High post

schooling jr. high school primary

Academic - - 2% -
Liberal/technical - 3% 6% 76%
Clerical - 8% 10% -
Agents, sales, and services 9% 15% 22% -
Skilled farm workers 6% 7% - -
Skilled manufacturing workers 25% 24% 37% -
Unskilled workers 60% 43% 24% 24%
Total 100% 100% 100% 100%

Academic Other Unknown Total

Academic 14% - - 1%
Liberal/technical 23% 15% - 7%
Clerical 37% - - 7%
Agents, sales, and services 3% 12% - 14%
Skilled farm workers 7% - - 4%
Skilled manufacturing workers 16% 36% 100% 29%
Unskilled workers - 37% - 38%
Total 100% 100% 100% 100%

Source: Adva Center analysis of Central Bureau of Statistics, Labor

Force Surveys 1999, Demographic File.
Table 17

Ethiopian Israelis Aged 15-24, by Labor Force Participation and Gender

Men Women
Total 15-17 18-20 21-24 Total

Total 4,857 1,780 1,667 1,410 4,857

Nonparticipants 80% 87% 90% 60% 71%
Participants 20% 13% 10% 40% 29%
Thereof: employed 66% 74% 16% 76% 68%
Not employed 35% 26% 85% 24% 32%

Women
15-17 18-20 21-24

Total 1,577 1,460 1,820

Nonparticipants 91% 69% 55%
Participants 9% 31% 45%
Thereof: employed 44% 69% 72%
Not employed 56% 31% 28%

Source: Adva Center analysis of Central Bureau of Statistics, Labor

Force Surveys 1999, Demographic File.
Table 18

Number of Ethiopian Israelis Passing the Matriculation Exams and the

Proportion of Students Passing of All Students Taking the Exams,
1995-2000

Students Passing the

Students Exams as a Proportion
Passing of Students Taking the
Exams Exams

1995 159 30.7%

1996 241 38.8%
1997 294 29.6%
1998 420 39.1%
1999 467 43.9%
2000 437 42.7%

Note: The twelfth-grade population includes students in tenth and

eleventh grades who took at least one matriculation exam.

Source: Ministry of Education, memorandum, August 30, 2001.

Table 19

Ethiopian Israeli Students in Preparatory Programs Run by the

Association for the Advancement of Education, 2000 - 2002

Students in all Thereof: in university

Year programs preparatory programs

2000 950 132

2001 900 137
2002 855 116

Note: (1.)The figure for students in all programs in 2002 does not
include admissions to January classes.

(2.)The figures for students in university-affiliated programs includes

students at Machon Lev-Jerusalem College of Technology: 31 in 2000, 46
in 2001, and 21 in 2002.

Source: Association for the Advancement of Education, January 2, 2002.

Table 20

Ethiopian Israeli Students by Degree, Institution, and Major, 1994

Total Degree
Bachelor's Master's

Total Thereof,
first year

Total 153 127 82 1

Institution

Hebrew University 20 7 3 -
Technion 3 3 1
Tel Aviv University 15 9 1 -
Bar-Ilan University 29 24 7 1
Haifa University 66 65 61 -
Ben-Gurion University
of the Negev 19 19 9 -
Weizmann Institute
of Science 1 - - -

Major

Humanities 56 50 38 1
Social sciences 67 56 33 -

Law 1 1 1 -
Medicine 3 2 - -
Paramedical fields 9 9 6 -
Natural sciences 7 4 2 -
Agriculture
Engineering and architecture 5 5 2 -
Other 5 - - -

Doctorate Certificate

Total 17 8

Institution

Hebrew University 8 5
Technion
Tel Aviv University 4 2
Bar-Ilan University 3 1
Haifa University 1 -
Ben-Gurion University
of the Negev - -
Weizmann Institute

of Science 1 -

Major

Humanities 4 1
Social sciences 11 -
Law - -
Medicine - 1
Paramedical fields - -
Natural sciences 2 1
Agriculture
Engineering and architecture - -
Other - 5

Note: Plus 39 students in 1994.

Source: Central Bureau of Statistics, memorandum, August 12, 2001.

Table 21

Ethiopian Israeli Students by Degree, Institution, and Major, 1999

Total Degree
Bachelor's Master's
Total Thereof,
first year

Total 553 478 176 2

Institution

Hebrew University 21 12 5 -
Technion 10 10
Tel Aviv University 31 18 8 -
Bar-Ilan University 185 154 65
Haifa University 206 192 59 2
Ben-Gurion University
of the Negev 98 92 39 -
The Weizmann
Institute of Science 2 - - -

Major

Humanities 197 179 66 2

Social sciences 210 188 76 -
Law 6 6 2 -
Medicine 3 - - -
Paramedical fields 50 49 14 -
Natural sciences 39 37 12 -
Agriculture -
Engineering and architecture 20 19 6 -
Other 28 - - -

Doctorate Certificate

Total 39 34

Institution

Hebrew University 5 4
Technion
Tel Aviv University 11 2
Bar-Ilan University 5 26
Haifa University 10 2
Ben-Gurion University
of the Negev 6 -
The Weizmann
Institute of Science 2 -

Major

Humanities 14 2
Social sciences 20 2
Law - -
Medicine 2 1
Paramedical fields - 1
Natural sciences 2 -

Agriculture
Engineering and architecture 1 -
Other - 28

Note: In addition, in 1999, 71 students attended non-degree programs in

universities.

Source: Central Bureau of Statistics, August 12, 2001.

Table 22

Bachelor's Degree Candidates of Ethiopian Extraction at Accredited

Colleges, by Major, 1996 and 1999

1996 1999

Total Thereof, Total Thereof,

first year firs year

Total 9 3 59 33
Technological sciences 2 1 33 24
Economics and business 4 2 7 6
management
Arts and design 2 - 5 -
Law 1 - 3 1
Communications - - 1 -

Humanities - - 10 2

Source: Central Bureau of Statistics, memorandum, August 16, 2001

Figure 2

Labor Force Participation, Total Israeli Population and Ethiopian

Israelis, Ages 25-54, 1999

Total Israeli Population

Not in Labor Force 24%

In Labor Force 76%

Note: Table made from pie chart

Ethiopian Israelis

Not in Labor Force 47%

In Labor Force 53%

Source: Adva Center analysis of Central Bureau of Statitics, Labor Force

Survey 1999, Demographic File.

Note: Table made from pie chart

Figure 3

Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate, Total Israeli Men and Ethiopian

Israeli Men, Three Age Groups, 1999

Age Group Total Israeli Men Ethiopian Israelis

25 - 34 81% 74%
35 - 44 86% 61%
45 - 54 87% 76%

Source: Adva Center analysis of Central Bureau of Statistics, Labor

Force Surveys 1999, Demographic File.

Note: Table made from bar graph

Figure 4

Civilian Labor Force Participation Rate, Total Israeli Women and

Ethiopian Israeli Women, Three Age Groups, 1999

Age Group Total Israeli Women Ethiopian Israelis

25 - 34 66% 46%
35 - 44 69% 35%
45 - 54 69% 18%

Source: Adva Center analysis of Central Bureau of Statistics, Labor

Force Surveys 1999, Demographic File.

Note: Table made from bar graph

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RELATED ARTICLE: Control and Dependency
The anthropologist Esther Herzog, who studied the experiences of
Ethiopian immigrants in Jewish Agency absorption centers (1998), claims
that mediated absorption helped to label Ethiopian immigrants as a
particularly problematic group: "The absorption organizations treat
'immigrant absorption' as a social problem and immigrants as a
social category in need of assistance. They treat the 'absorption
of Ethiopian immigrants' as a particular problem and Ethiopian
immigrants as a particularly needy social category" (ibid.: 73).
Herzog describes mediated absorption as a process that aggrandizes the
power of petty officials and hinders integration. Absorption centers,
Herzog asserts, are closed, sheltered institutions that encourage people
to relate to immigrants "as one homogeneous essence, one bloc, a
category" (ibid.: 35). She shows how the institution monitors the

immigrants' comings and goings and how the employees at the center
and the immigrants develop a relationship of control and dependency.
Direct Absorption
When the direct absorption policy was extended to a small group of
Ethiopian immigrants, they came out ahead. In April 1994, a direct
absorption experiment carried out in three localities in the
Negev--Ofakim, Dimona, and Arad--including 263 households, was examined
in a report compiled by adult participants in a leadership-training
program. (Notably, unlike the direct absorption of former Soviet
immigrants, these immigrants were assigned paraprofessional community
workers like those paired with Ethiopian immigrants housed in absorption
centers.) In questionnaires that authors of the report distributed to
the paraprofessionals, two issues were examined: the degree of
independence that the immigrants had developed and the cost of the
system. The results: the paraprofessionals found direct integration less
expensive than the normal process and more conducive to making
immigrants feel independent (Kedar, Edri, and Shalvi, 1994).
Concentration vs. Dispersion
Concern about concentrations of Ethiopian Israelis lies at the core
of many official discussions and documents. Even today policymakers and
policy analysts find the issue troublesome. Many point to concentration
as the result of a unique preference among Ethiopian Israelis. The
Central Bureau of Statistics did this, for example, when it indicated
that "It is characteristic of Ethiopian immigrants to wish to live
with other Ethiopian immigrants" (CBS, June 6, 2001). Time and
again, researchers ask members of the Ethiopian community whether they

would really prefer to live in a neighborhood or building where most

residents are of Ethiopian extraction.
Primarily, it is the establishment that is bothered by the
concentration issue. Ethiopian immigrants seem to behave like other
groups of immigrants in Israel and abroad, who tend to live close to one
another, certainly in the first generation and sometimes for several
generations. (In the United States, for example, one finds Jewish
neighborhoods today, four or even five generations after the mass
immigration of Jews from Eastern Europe.)
The wish to prevent the formation of Ethiopian concentrations
prompted policy-makers to establish rather detailed rules. In regard to
housing, efforts were to be made to thwart the grouping of too many
households in one neighborhood.
In education, the dispersion policy was reflected in instructions
to limit the concentration of Ethiopian immigrants to a maximum of 25
percent per class (State Comptroller's Office, Annual Report 1998:
335). To demonstrate the importance of the dispersion goal, the Ministry
of Education stipulated that wherever large concentrations of Ethiopian
immigrant schoolchildren existed, they should be bused to schools
outside their neighborhoods (or enrolled in non-religious State schools,
if their parents so preferred) (ibid.).
The strong emphasis on dispersion, and the fact that the emphasis
is just as strong today as it was in the years immediately following the
great waves of immigration, give reason for concern about the existence
of a tacit assumption among absorption policymakers that
"Ethiopianness" is a fundamentally negative trait that ought

to be "diluted" by dispersing these immigrants in small

quantities into the sea of "Israeliness."
However, the establishment's concern about
"overconcentration" of Ethiopian Israelis seems largely to
have been internalized by activists in the community, who tend to point
to concentration-foremost in education and housing-as evidence of
discrimination and deprivation. This is mainly because concentration
results in the group receiving low-quality housing, education, and
employment opportunities. In this respect, concentration is synonymous
with the risk of marginalization.
Nevertheless, community activists do not oppose concentration
wherever it improves the group's socio-cultural ranking. The
chapter on education, below, provides a possible example of such an
improvement.
Civilian Labor Force
The civilian labor force includes all persons actually working in
the civilian (as opposed to the military) labor market and anyone
actively seeking work. Persons belonging to the labor force are defined
as women and men aged 15+ who are working when Central Bureau of
Statistics canvassers visit their homes or who are not working but have
sought work actively in the four weeks preceding visit. Who is excluded
from the civilian labor force? (1) Israelis under age 15; (2) persons
aged 15+ who neither worked nor sought work during the week of the
canvasser's visit - students, volunteers, full-time homemakers,
people who are incapable of working, persons who live on pension or rent
income, and soldiers in army service (conscript or career).

Employed and Unemployed Persons

Although participation in the civilian labor force is calculated
from age 15, our analysis focuses on the 25 - 54 age group. This is
considered the main working age, especially in Western countries, where
people usually enter the labor market after they complete their studies,
which often includes higher education. In Israel, this categorization is
justified for an additional reason: most young people are in military
service between the ages of 18 and 20 (girls) or 21 (boys).
The civilian labor force is made up of two categories of people:
employed and unemployed persons.
Employed persons are those who performed any form of work, for a
wage, profit, or other remuneration, for at least one hour during the
week in which the CBS canvasser visited them. Unemployed persons are
those who did not work at all during that week and who reported actively
seeking work in the preceding four weeks. The data presented below were
analyzed from the Demographic File of the Central Bureau of Statistics
labor force surveys for 1999. The analysis pertains to persons aged 15+
who were born in Ethiopia or had one parent who was born there, and who
settled in Israel in or after 1980. It should be pointed out that since
this is a small-population sample, some of the figures are prone to
sampling errors.
The table below shows that Ethiopian Israeli men have a more or
less stable participation rate: 74 percent in the 25 -34 age groups, 61
percent in the 35 -44 age groups, and 76 percent in the in the 45 - 54
age group. Among women, however, participation rates decline as the age
rises--from 46 percent for the 25-34 age group to 35 percent for the

35-44 age group and 18 for the 45-54 age group. The participation rates
of both sexes are higher among the Israeli population at large than
among Ethiopian Israelis and are more stable, especially among women.
The rates are 81 percent for the 25-34 group, 86 percent for the 35-44
group, and 86 percent for the 45-54 group among Israeli men, and 66
percent, 69 percent, and 69 percent, respectively, among women (computed
from ibid.).